Shoot Thinning the Auxerrois

We are now shoot thinning our Auxerrois. Last year, we came to the conclusion that we must raise our fruiting wire in order for our vines to reach the first catch wire and I blogged about it here: Rethinking Our Vineyard Trellis.
We tried it only on our Auxerrois as a proof of concept for our hypothesis that by raising the fruiting wire, our vines will be able to reach the first catch wire in their initial growth phase, thereby helping the vines to get going in the correct orientation to be in the catch wires. Why does this matter? We hope that by doing this, we will avoid the endless shoot positioning that we had to do last year.
Here is a photo of our Auxerrois achieving that:

While we were working on thinning the Auxerrois we noticed that there were many secondary shoots that also grew. One way to tell the secondary shoot from the primary shoot is that the secondary shoot may or may not have any inflorescence. In this photo, both the primary and the secondary shoots had inflorescence, but the primary had two instead of one. The secondary shoot, therefore was picked off.

We have had a very rainy spring so far with April showers bringing May showers. However, Mother Nature has now accommodated our work day but raining in the evening. Still, when we get to the vineyard, the moisture is still on the vines, preventing us from shoot thinning until it dries off. This spring has been cool with occasional punctuations of heat and the vines seem to like this slow entry into summer.

Early Season Canopy Management

My husband recently sent me this article about Early season grapevine canopy management, Part I: Shoot thinning. This is a very timely article because that is precisely what we have been doing.
This is what the article said about the benefits of shoot thinning:

• Improving balance between vegetative growth and fruit biomass
• Reduction of canopy density and fruit shading
• Reduction of disease pressure by reducing canopy density

When do to shoot thinning: Shoot thinning should be done early in the growing season, when shoots are approximately 5-6 inches long and not more than 10-12 inches long and performed when inflorescences are visible.
We began by shoot thinning our Chardonnay because we have noticed in the past that the Chardonnay takes off once it has achieved budbreak. The crowding of the Chardonnay canopy occurs very quickly if we are not on top of the shoot thinning.

Our next task was to shoot thin the Cabernet Franc clone 214. The bronze coloration of the new leaves reminded me a little of how Auxerrois new leaves look. We have two clones of Cabernet Franc, clones 214 and 327. Clone 214 was the first to have budbreak compared to Clone 327 and at this point, clone 214 is even ahead of the Chardonnay in terms of growth.
While shoot thinning the Cabernet Franc, my husband and I noticed that the Cabernet Franc already was showing it's tendrils. We can also see the beginning of the inflorescence on the new shoots!

References:
1. Maria Smith and Dr. Michela Centinari, Early season grapevine canopy management, Part I: Shoot thinning, May 19, 2017.

2019 Planting Vines

This is the third (hopefully final) year that we will be replanting the vines that died in the original planting that we did in 2013. To recap how our vines died, please check out my blogpost: 90% at the School of Hard Knocks. The thing about custom grafted vines is that it takes 18 months to reorder them. Once we knew in 2014 that 90% of our vines were dead and we placed an order, it took until 2016 to get in the replacement vines.
We had to consider how we would replant the vines when the trellis wire was already in place. Looking on the internet, my husband found videos of people using a mini-track steer with an auger to dig holes. Here are the blogposts I wrote in 2016 when we were anticipating our 6,000 vines.

• April 21, 2016 Trepanning with the Dingo
• May 13, 2016 Preparing the Staging Area for Planting
• May 14, 2016 More Planting Preparations
• May 15, 2016 Planting Day 1
• May 19, 2016 6 Days 30 People 4200 Vines

It turned out that when the vines were ready to be shipped, instead of 6,000 vines, we were shipped 4,200 vines. So the remaining 1800 vines were cued up to be shipped to us in 2017. This is what we did in 2017:

• May 3, 2017 The Vines are Here
• May 6, 2017 Planting Day
• May 9, 2017 Vintage 2017: Planting Time

It is already Tuesday, May 21! Planting is done! But here is what we did to get there. As in previous years, we used a mini-skid steer fitted with an auger bit. This year, the mini-skid steer was the best that we had rented in our three of experience with the mini-skid steer. The track was smaller and the auger bit was sharp! We drilled the holes on Wednesday, May 15 and Thursday, May 16th on the two days that it didn't rain!

Our friends came to help us this past weekend and over Saturday, May 18th and Sunday, May 19th. Saturday was a beautiful day and our friends helped us to plant all of the Barbera into the pre-dug holes and one row of the Auxerrois, again in pre-dug holes before we called it a day.
We had a bit more work to do on Sunday, two half rows of Auxerrois. After that got done our friends also helped us to take the dead vines from the Cabernet Sauvignon (5 dead), Cabernet Franc (2 dead) and Barbera (3 dead) and replant those dead vines with vines from our nursery.

We managed to plant approximately 600 vines of Barbera and Auxerrois in those two days.
With the exception of half a row of Auxerrois, our vineyard is back to the original planting of 6800 vines. In the process of replanting the vineyard, we decreased the amount of Chardonnay rows and planted test rows of Cabernet Sauvignon ENTAV clone 412, Cabernet Franc ENTAV clones 214 and 327 and Barbera. It appears to us that the Cabernet Franc really loves the site. Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc are both at this growth phase of 4-5 leaves separated (Eichhorn Lorenz stages 11-12) right now.

Vintage 2019: May Budbreak in our Vineyard

Although we have been having cloudy, drizzly, rainy weather, the vines are on their own schedule and are coming out of dormancy. These photos were taken on May 8th and 9th.

Variety	Budbreak
Auxerrois
Chenin Blanc
Chardonnay Clone ENTAV 76
Chardonnay Clone ENTAV 96
Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Franc Clone ENTAV 214
Cabernet Franc Clone ENTAV 327
Barbera

It's interesting to us that for the Chardonnay, ENTAV clone 96 seems to be ahead of the ENTAV clone 76 and for the Cabernet Franc, ENTAV clone 214 appears to be ahead of the ENTAV clone 327.

Part 2: Geology of Our Vineyard in Connecticut

In my last blogpost, Part 1: Geology of Our Vineyard in Connecticut, I spent some time on how the small continent of Avalonia, which had split off from the proto African land mass of Gondwana came to be a part of the Eastern Upland region of Connecticut.
However, I left all of the land masses congealed as Pangaea. This congealed landmass answers the question of where our bedrock known as Avalonia came from. It also answers the question that due to the immense forces that were exerted upon Avalonia, the rock which was granitic in origin changed or metamorphosed into gneiss in our area.
I was writing this second part of the Geology of Our Vineyard in Connecticut when this timely article appeared in Newsweek: EARTH'S CONTINENTS HAVE BEEN MANGLED AND TORN APART OVER THE LAST 250 MILLION YEARS. HERE'S HOW. In that article there is a video on how the continents broke apart, which is exactly what I was going to blog about using pictures. Animation is much better and lets me skip 200 million years of time!
Glaciation Events in Connecticut:
Between 150,000 and 130,000 years ago, Connecticut may have been covered with a glacier during the Illinoian age, but not much is known about it. During the second glaciation event, known as the Wisconsin Ice Age, the Laurentide Ice Sheet, was located near Hudson's Bay to the north. This ice sheet entered Connecticut about 26,000 years ago, reached its maximum about 21,000 years ago, and was melted out of the state by 15,500 years ago. Mixtures of sand, gravel, rocks and boulders were frozen in the ice, picked up in the glacier and transported south.

Rocks carried and deposited by glaciers are called till and can range in size from clay to house sized boulders. These rocks in Connecticut came from Massachusetts, Vermont, New York and Quebec. Evidence of these rocks can be found all over our vineyard. We tried to remove the largest of these rocks when we planted our vines.

In 2013, shortly after planting our vines, our vineyard rows looked like this, thanks to glacial till from the Laurentian Ice Sheet:

They don't call where we live, Stonington, for nothing!
References:
1. EARTH'S CONTINENTS HAVE BEEN MANGLED AND TORN APART OVER THE LAST 250 MILLION YEARS. HERE'S HOW.
2. Long Island Sound Resource Center, Connecticut Geology: The Grain of the Land.
3. Illustraction of the Laurentian Ice Sheet from: Friends of Mianus River Park 4. Avalonia - Geologic History exerpted from WRITTEN IN STONE: A GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STA TES, ©1989 by Chet Raymo and Maureen E. Raymo.
5. Natural Resources and Conservation Service, Soil Catenas of Connecticut.

American Lady Butterfly (Vanessa virginiensis) Sighting

Yesterday, finally a day that turned into a sunny day, we were up on the land. My husband did a first pass at mowing the vineyard and I was walking the rows to clean up the canes that we had laid down. On one of the rows I saw this butterfly, out came the camera and the snapping began. This butterfly was easily disturbed so I did my best imitation of a mannequin while I took the pictures. Here is one that came out pretty good.

All I had to do was to identify it. This is easy, I thought because I had a lot of hits when I put in "eastern butterfly that looks like the American Copper Butterfly". I immediately thought that my butterfly picture was of the Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) and I began to blog about it. Then on the Adirondacks Forever Wild site that I was looking at, there was information stating that the Painted Lady has quite a similar appearance to the American Lady! When I checked the American Lady identification, it turned out that this butterfly is indeed an American Lady Butterfly. The one obvious identifying mark that can distinguish the American Lady from the Painted Lady is the white spot on the orange background on the forewing. That's how I came to realize that my photo was of the American Lady.
This is what I love about working in the vineyard. I love seeing these unexpected sightings and learning something new. It's the cherry on top of the sundae for me.
References:
1. A very good site with a lot of photos and information is the: Butterflies and Moths of North America.

Part 1: Geology of Our Vineyard in Connecticut

Earlier this year I blogged about the Geology of Champagne and its ancient geological origins that lead to the formation of the chalk that is so important in the growing of grapes for making champagne.
I was spurred on this quest for learning about the geology of our area in southeastern Connecticut since I should know this because wine geeks associate the soil type with the wine that is produced. It took a while to understand how our state was formed but it is an interesting and enlightening journey into geologic history.
First, let me begin with what I knew after living in Connecticut for 35 years. I knew that we were part of Avalonia. Avalonia is a terrane, or a section of the earth's crust that has it's own history. The terranes that constitute the state of Connecticut are arranged, by and large in a north-south direction. The Avalonia terrane, part of the Eastern Uplands is shown colored in pink in this illustration.

The question that I was seeking to answer was how did Connecticut get to be like this, comprised of (from west to east), the Western Uplands, the Central Valley and the Eastern Uplands.
From the beginning of the formation of our earth, land masses have continually been moving in a process called plate tectonics. Going back 500 million years to the Ordovician Period, the arrangement of land masses looked like the illustration below. Instead of the modern Atlantic Ocean, there was the Iapetos Ocean. Laurentia (proto North America) and Baltica (proto Western Europe) had drifted away from Gondwana. Avalonia, located in the southern hemisphere, had separated from Gondwana, resulting in the birth of the Rheic Ocean.

Here is another view of the land masses as they were arranged 500 million years ago. This view shows the land mass of Avalonia and its relationship with Laurentia and Baltica as well as the Iapetus ocean.

Then about 300 million years ago, several crustal plates, including Africa and Eurasia collided with Laurentia, the proto North American plate to create the Appalachian Mountains and the supercontinent Pangaea. Plates composed of oceanic crust and plates composed of continental crust met and the lighter, thicker continental plate rode over the thinner, denser oceanic plate causing the oceanic crust to sink toward the interior of the earth (subduction).
During this collision Avalonia, a small continent believed to have been part of the African plate, was caught in the crunch when Baltica and Laurentia collided closing and collapsing the lapetos Ocean.

Here is another look at Pangaea which places Connecticut right in the rift zone which is an extensive system of fractures and faults. As the land mass collided and was heated by the east-west compression, the rocks became pliable and tended to fold along a north-south axes.
This tremendous heat generated by the colliding land masses altered the primary rock-forming elements. Forces exerted on the primary elements of silicon, oxygen, aluminum, calcium, sodium, iron, potassium, magnesium created new minerals that became stable under these new conditions. Clay metamorphosed into mica and grit changed into quartz. These forces lead to the creation of the metamorphical origins of the schists and gneisses in Connecticut.

For the moment, we will leave the continents stuck together in the supercontinent Pangaea. Stay tuned for my next blog about the break up of Pangaea.
References:
1. Illustrations from C. R. Scotese from The Paleomap Project.
2. Murphy, J & Pisarevsky, Sergei & Nance, R & Keppie, John. (2001). Animated history of Avalonia in Neoproterozoic - Early Proterozoic. Journal of The Virtual Explorer. 3. 10.3809/jvirtex.2001.0009
Animated history of Avalonia in Neoproterozoic - Early Proterozoic
3. Online: Avalonia - Geologic History exerpted from WRITTEN IN STONE: A GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STA TES, ©1989 by Chet Raymo and Maureen E. Raymo.

Chenin Blanc at Bud Break

I love seeing our Chenin Blanc in bud break because the young leaves are tinged with pink and it really looks like a pink flower to me. In the photos below, you can see the pink leaves making their way through the wooly bud stage.

The problem with this is that we have just a handful more Chenin Blanc vines to prune and canes to lay down. This must be done very carefully because at this stage, the newly emerged leaves have a very tenuous hold with the cane and can easily be knocked off. But, with April and May being so rainy, Mother Nature dictates what we can do in the vineyard.

Getting up close to the Chenin Blanc buds also allowed me to see something else that loves young grape vine leaves and that is the grape vine flea beetle Altica spp. (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae). This is the damage they can cause to the new bud.
The grape vine flea beetle is easily recognizable. Although it is very tiny, smaller than a lady bug, it is a beautiful blue and therefore can't be missed. Grape flea beetles overwinter as adults under the soil surface or in wood crevices, in and around the grapevines. They emerge as adults from overwintering sites, feed upon grape buds, mate and lay eggs.
This is a picture of the grapevine flea beetle that I took on July 6, 2013 when the grapevine leaves were infested with the developing grapevine flea beetle larva. The damage to the leaves can be devastating.

Knowing this, my husband was on a mission during pruning. Whenever he saw these beautiful blue beetles, he squashed them!

2016 Frescobaldi Castiglioni Chianti

We've been trying to prune non-stop in April, working around all the rainy days that we have been having. One evening, after an especially grueling day, we ordered up our favorite pizza and drank this 2016 Frescobaldi Castiglioni Chianti.
Chianti is a good pairing with anything with red sauce. This Chianti is an easy drinking, approachable wine with nice red berry fruit flavors and good structure with nicely balanced acidity and tannins.
I've purposefully left the price tag on---$14.99! This is a very quaffable Chianti and the price makes it a great pairing with a humble, but oh so yummy food like pizza.