Cluster Counting

We have had very little rainfall in the past 3 months, in addition to a heat wave that lasted for 9 days beginning on July 20. High heat coupled with no rain leads to no sugar transport into the young grapes. Fortunately, our irrigation system went on line on Friday, July 22, just in the nick of time.
We are right on track with what we were doing last year: 2015 Cluster Counting. With so few plants producing grapes, but more than we had last year, we need to count each cluster to make some projections for how we will be vinifying the grapes that we have. We began cluster counting yesterday. Many of the clusters were located on struggling vines so those clusters had to be dropped.

However, one of the dropped clusters was due to an errant slip of the pruning shears. We took advantage of this mistake to weigh the cluster and take the Brix reading with a refractometer. Our Brix registered at 4.6 degrees.
If last year is any indication of grape development, the grapes will be entering veraison (the onset of ripening) at the end of the month. We have more cluster counting to do in order to make some projections on how much wine we can potentially make.