Vintage 2016: Hot, Dry Summer

It has been a hot and dry summer so far. The last measurable rain that we had fell on May 30, when we had almost 1-inch of rain. Since that time, we have not recorded rainfall of any significance. June passed with no rain at all falling on our vineyard and newly planted vines. At one point, I thought our rain gauge was broken. It's not that Connecticut hasn't had rain events. We watched as weather patterns made it's way across the United States, reaching the western portion of Connecticut, and were especially hopeful on Thursday, July 14th and Monday, July 25th. As the storm system came across from the west to the east, they fizzled out just a few miles west of the Connecticut River.

Today is another day of praying for rain and this morning, we have had a steady rainfall. I do hope it amounts to something. In the meantime, we have managed to activate our irrigation system and before the vines were in a crisis state, started to irrigate portions of our vineyard that had the drip tubing in place. In my next blog, I hope to show you what my husband and our well installer Tony did to get us up and running with water.

2003 Dehlinger Goldridge Vineyard Pinot Noir

Our friends brought out this 2003 Dehlinger Goldridge Vineyard Pinot Noir when we went over to their home for dinner recently. My husband did not know at first that it was a Dehlinger Pinot Noir and after taking a few sips, he really liked the wine and asked our friends what it was.
Tom and Carole Dehlinger began the Dehlinger winery in 1973 in the Russian River Valley. Way back in 2011, when I was still enrolled in the U.C. Davis Online Viticulture and Enology Certification Course, I had an opportunity to taste the 1994 Dehlinger Syrah. At that time, Eva Dehlinger, was also taking the course and I emailed her about having the Syrah. Eva is Tom and Carole's daughter. Shout out to Eva, we really enjoyed this 2003 Pinot Noir! It was medium bodied with intense color and after 13 years, the wine was smooth and delicious.

Inflorescence Formation Part 3

On June 21, I blogged about Grapevine Inflorescence Formation---Parts 1 and 2. The timing of inflorescence production is what I'd like to tackle in this blog.
In the previous blog, 2 was circled, today's blog is a discussion about 3.¹

The steps between 2 and 3 in the illustration above is occurring from early spring to midsummer in the current season, that is, right now.
This constitutes formation of inflorescence that can be categorized into three separate processes:²
          1) Formation of anlagen or uncommitted primordia
              also-Inflorescence initiation (induction)
          2) Formation of inflorescence primordia
          3) Formation of flowers
The first two stages are completed during the current growing season. The formation of the inflorescence primordia or anlage (German for rudiment) itself has been divided into 7 Inflorescence Primordia (IP) Stages:²

IP   Stage	Description2,3	Illustration3
Stage   0	Depending on the cultivar, the shoot apical meristem (SAM) of a young latent bud forms a specific number of leaf primordia before the formation of the first anlage. The illustration to the right shows that the shoot apical meristem (SAM) is surrounded by leaf primordia at its ends and scale primordia on the flanks.
Stage   1	Bisection of the shoot apical meristem (SAM) to form the anlage. The anlage is opposite the youngest leaf primordium. The illustration to the right shows that the apex of the shoot apical meristem (SAM) is bilobed into two equal parts with the SAM at the end next to the youngest leaf primordium and the anlage (at stage 1) at the other end.
Stage   2	The anlage has separated from the apex and is developing into blunt broad obovate structure. The illustration to the right shows that the anlage (at stage 2) has separated from the shoot apical meristem (SAM) and is becoming more broad and blunt with no scales on its flanks. Leaf primordia are at the ends of the growing point.
Stage   3	Formation of a bract primordium from the abaxial flank of the anlage. Stage 3 is identified by the formation of the bract. The illustration to the right shows the bract surrounding the outer edge of the anlage.
Stage   4	Division of the anlage to form an inner arm and an outer arm. The inner arm becomes the main axis of the inflorescence and the outer arm becomes the proximal branch of the inflorescence. The illustration to the right shows that the anlage has separated into two arms. The outer arm is surrounded by a bract on its outer edge and is smaller than the inner arm. The inner arm is broad with a flat superior surface.
Stage   5a	Growth of the main axis (inner arm) to give rise to the first branch primordium (BP). The illustration to the right shows that the outer arm has little growth and no branching, and the inner arm has two branches. The outer arm is substantially covered by a bract that is clearly visible.
Stage   5b	The illustration to the right show that the outer arm has not branched and is almost fully covered by a large bract and the inner arm is much larger and has more than four branches.
Stage   6	Growth of the main axis of the inflorescence primordium to form several branch primordia and bract primordia. The illustration to the right shows that the outer arm has just started branching and has at least two branches. The inner arm is larger with many branches.
Stage   7	Differentiation of the branch primordium at bud burst and formation of the flower initials. The illustration to the right shows that the outer arm has more than two branches; the inner arm is larger with many branches. A large bract covers the outer arm and there is a distinct gap between the inner and outer arms.

One reason that I decided to look into the formation of inflorescences is that when we pruned our vines in early March, we left the cane a little longer than necessary in the event that there was a frost, the apical bud will break first and delay budbreak for the rest of the cane. As it turned out, we didn't have any frost event in early spring and we became busy with our planting of 4200 vines and left the canes longer than necessary. When we went back to prune the long canes, they were already at the 10-16 inch shoot stage and showing many inflorescences, which we unfortunately had to prune back. The remaining shoots, didn't show any inflorescences and I wondered why. This is my attempt to answer the question for myself. I'll stop here for today and maybe tackle the conditions necessary for bud fruitfulness in a future blog. Stay tuned.
Reference:
1. For the illustration the grape inflorescence growth cycle was taken from:
Wine Science - Third Edition, Ronald Jackson
The grape bud was taken from:
YouTube: The Grapevine Bud
The was taken from:
Jennifer Hashim-Maguire, Managing the vegetative canopy and its effects on bud fruitfulness and fruit quality.
2. Chinnathambi Srinivasan and Michael G. Mullins, Physiology of Flowering in the Grapevine a Review, Am. J. Enol. Vitic., Vol. 32, No. 1, 1981.
3. Peter W. Noyce, John D.I. Harper, Christopher C. Steel, Robyn M. Wood, "A Practical Method for Staging Grapevine Inflorescence Primordia in Season 1, with Improved Description of Stages" American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, Nov 2015, 66 (4) 492-501; DOI: 10.5344/ajev.2015.14135.
4. Markus Keller, The Science of Grapevines Anatomy and Physiology, 2010, Academic Press, pg. 43.

Nests Happen

I came upon this cute little nest while I was shoot positioning and opening up the canopy in the Chenin blanc. I had an inkling that it could be a bluebird nest. We have bluebirds in the area so it was not a wild guess. The nest was very small (about 3 inches in diameter) and so neatly constructed. The mystery bird used grass to construct the nest. I know where that came from,

the tall grass that Kim and I weed wacked.
I went online to look for small blue bird eggs and found the Sialis.org page that was all about Nests and eggs that may show up in bluebird nestboxes. It described the eastern bluebird nest to a "t".

At around the same time, my husband was weed wacking in the Auxerrois and found this nest which he immediately identified as a mockingbird nest. He knew this because it is probably the same mockingbird that made a nest in the sage in my garden. We knew from previous online research that if there is an egg in the nest, the nest cannot be removed since the mockingbird is protected under the Migratory Bird Act, so "no Scout, not only can you not kill a mockingbird, you cannot even move it's nest." The funny thing is, my husband had noticed the mockingbird trying to build a nest in the Chardonnay and he would constantly remove the nest material, all the while, the wily mockingbird may have been constructing her real nest in the Auxerrois. They don't call these birds "mocking"birds for nothing! We are coping with these nests in the grapevines, but next time, we hope to do our canopy management before nests happen!

Vintage 2016: Summer

Our friend came to help us with line trimming of our weeds in the vineyard (thanks, Kim!) so at this very moment, the vineyard looks really nice and clean. A view down this row of Chardonnay shows the vines we planted in 2013 as well as the newly planted vines. This was just in time because yesterday, we had a "site visit" from the Farm Services Association representative to check up on our replanting.

The night before, we had some much needed rain but the accumulation was minimal at best. Still, something is better than nothing. However, after the rain passed, the day was so hot and humid it brought out the perennial swarm of Japanese beetles. So, while Tricia was mapping our vineyard using GPS, I was out with my soapy water catching as many Japanese beetles as I could. You might remember the photo on the right from the summer of 2014. My husband has now sanctioned my beetle catching activity, but he has absolutely put his foot down when it comes to keeping the dead bugs in a juice jar. I try to do shoot positioning and canopy management while I catch beetles, multitasking at this time of the year is critical.
We are in for some hot and steamy weather for the next few days.