Last Word From the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium Trade Show

The Unified Wine and Grape Symposium Trade Show is a great place to check out various Wine and Vineyard related tools. This coming March, we will be faced with pruning 6,000 vines. My husband is in the market for a battery operated pruner that is light but powerful and keeps a charge for a long time. This is one of those tools that we found to be best to check out in person. How light is the battery, how heavy are the pruners, how powerful are the pruners, what is the warranty? We went with one preconceived notion in mind, but in testing the two options, we felt that one was superior. Had we not been at the trade show, we might have made a somewhat costly mistake.

Another reason to attend the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium Trade Show was to hook up with people in the business.

We ran into Sebastian, whom we worked with when we originally ordered our custom grafted tall vines. We first met Sebastian when we went to California in 2011 to check out nurseries and people we might work with. I blogged about it in A Visit to Mercier Grapevine Nursery. Since Mercier changed hands, we hadn't seen Sebastian, so this was a very pleasant reunion.

When we planted our Auxerrois last year, Kevin provided the budwood from their family operated nursery in Washington State. We are partial to the smaller nurseries because, being a small business ourselves, we feel that we have a connection with them. My husband was in contact with Kevin during the off-season to see if we could get more Auxerrois and Barbera to finish populating our vineyard. Kevin had mentioned that their tall grafted vines were 24 inches, not quite up to our specification of 32 inches, so it looked like we might have to wait until 2020 to get our custom grafts. But when we saw Kevin at the Trade Show, and talked with him, he said that he does have additional rootstock and that he could possibly fill our order! This is very good news because that means that we will be able to put in the remaining 800 vines in 2019. In our eyes, one year makes a big difference. We did look at tanks and destemmers and a whole lot of other equipment. So, all in all the time at the Trade Show was very productive.
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Photos from the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium Trade Show