Recap of Vintage 2019

It's that time of the year to recap the vintage year that was 2019. Winter 2019 seemed to spare us with the very cold temperature that was coming across the country in January. Our first major snowfall was in March 2019, just when our thoughts were turning toward the pruning duties that lay ahead of us.
Vineyard duties began at the end of March with pruning duties that lasted until late April. The take home lesson for us from this past spring and pruning in March is that some of the tasks we did such as cutting tendrils from the trellis wires need to be done much earlier. We also came to the conclusion that we can do the first cut of pruning in the cold dormant season, which will make pruning tasks a little faster when the time comes to deciding which canes we need to lay down for 2020.
May brought budbreak in our vineyard, with the Chardonnay being the first to send out young leaves into the chilly, Connecticut spring. Throughout May and June we waited for bloom. The late bloom allowed us to keep on shoot thinning in the first two weeks of June.
During one particular weekend in late June, most of our varieties began to bloom. It started with the Chardonnay, which we have come to learn is the first in our vineyard to bloom. Chardonnay was followed by the Auxerrois, then the Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Franc and last, the Cabernet Sauvignon.
The day of the summer solstice, June 21 brought 3/4 inches of rain. The effects of rainfall on bloom was evident in some of the early blooming Chardonnay where the flowers were not fertilized and withered on the rachis.
Summer was a halcyon time with rain occurring at least once a week or during the evening, allowing us a full work day. The remnants of tropical storm Barry brought 2-3/4 inches of rain on July 18th followed by a heat wave during the third week in July.
During this time, we were busy with the endless task of shoot positioning and leaf pulling. Summer was a blur of work while we waited for veraison. The first variety to reach veraison was the Auxerrois in the third week of August. While leaf pulling the Chenin Blanc closest to the Auxerrois, there was a noticeable difference in the softness of the Auxerrois compared to the Chenin Blanc. The Chardonnay was the next to ripen followed by the Cabernet Sauvignon, Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc. All through the waning months of summer, the varieties accumulated sugar in a way that we had not seen before and it was totally gratifying.
Our first harvest was the Auxerrois on September 23. While we anticipated harvesting 1500 pounds of grapes, we actually came in with 636 pounds which went to Jonathan Edwards who helped us with the pressing of these grapes. We harvested the Chardonnay on September 28. Since we only had a little less than 300 pounds of fruit, we resorted to our methodology of foot stomping these grapes and vinifying it in our basement.
The Chenin Blanc came in on October 14, with the help of approximately 30 of our friends. It amazed us that the 12 rows of Chenin Blanc were harvested in 2 hours! The weight of the Chenin Blanc was just short of 2 tons at 3930 pounds and once again, Michael and Alex at Jonathan Edwards helped us by weighing and pressing the grapes.
The Cabernet Franc came in on October 26, but we waited until November 3 to harvest the Cabernet Sauvignon. We were able to wait that long because the weather cooperated, but not enough to change the high titratable acid numbers.
The last harvest that we made for this year was our experiment in the wedding bags, the late harvest Chenin Blanc which we harvested on November 19.
So, our annual cycle of growth chart for 2019 looks like this:

We thank all of our friends and Jonathan Edwards staff who helped us with this year's harvest!