2020 Annual Cycle of Growth

It's that time again to update my annual of cycle of growth form. I summarized the information that I've been keeping since 2015 and provided the form in a blog on September 2019. It is something that I read about in Ed Hellman's online post called Grapevine Structure and Function.
This year, I will add Barbera to the form. This is the first year that we have laid down canes for the Barbera which we planted in 2016.

Since I began keeping data in the form, it seems that the Chardonnay are always the first to bloom. This year, we first saw the Chardonnay blooming on June 20 and by June 22, at least 50% of the flowers were blooming. The Cabernet Franc clone 214 was also around 40-50% bloom on June 22. We noticed that there was a difference between our two Cabernet Franc clones, 214 and 327. Clone 214 is always earlier to bud break than 327 and it is earlier to flower. The Barbera and the Auxerrois were around 20% in bloom and the Chenin Blanc was at more like 10% bloom. The Cabernet Sauvignon was not in bloom at all until June 25. Bloom lasted about a week or so before everything appeared to be at 100% bloom. All of our varieties are now at various stages of berry set.

Variety	Berryset Stage
Auxerrois
Chenin Blanc
Chardonnay
Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Franc
Barbera

2016 La Fontaine Aux Enfants

We had this 2016 La Fontaine Aux Enfrants Marc Kreydenweiss Pinot Blanc with dinner a few nights ago when my husband made grilled chicken and grilled vegetables. After the first sip, I thought that it tasted like the Auxerrois that we make. My husband said, close, it is a Pinot Blanc from Alsace. The aroma to me were of stone fruit, white peaches and pears. There was a good acidity to the wine, which our palates have now become quite accustomed to.
On the second night that we tried this wine we had it with grilled corn, avocado, and tortilla chip salad. This was a wonderful combination. I really liked this recipe which I got from "Vice". It is a perfect summer time recipe because everyone is grilling corn and if you have extra grilled corn, this is the way to use it. This wine pairs very well with summertime grilled food.

My husband pointed out that there is a lot more information about Marc Kreydenweiss on the Internet and sure enough there is. The winery is located in Andlau, in Alsace, between Strasbourg and Colmar, in the area called Piemont des Vosges.
On The Wine Anorak, Jamie Goode wrote that Marc Kreydenweiss has 12 ha of vineyards in Andlau, including parts of three Grand Cru sites in Wiebelsberg, Moenchberg and Kastelberg. The domaine is over three centuries old, and was taken over by Marc in 1971. It has been biodynamically managed since 1989 and the first entirely biodynamic vintage was in 1991.
In 2007, Marc Kreydenweiss' son, Antoine Kreydenweiss took over the management of the vineyard. He is accompanied by his wife Charlotte, their daughters Zoe, Lilou and Leonie, the whole team and his horse. At the Marc Kreydenweiss Site you can watch this video of man and horse weeding a part of the vineyard showing the vertiginous view of the village below.

2020 Planting Day

Hopefully, this is our last planting day to repopulate our vineyard that was devastated in 2014. Originally, we laser planted 6800 vines in 2013 but due to a number of factors, we lost 90% of our vines when the spring of 2014 came around. We reordered our vines in 2014 which meant that replanting would be in 2016 because it takes 18 months for a custom grafted vine to be created.
In the meantime, we put in our lineposts and endposts and trellis wire, all things that should either have been put into the vineyard or installed shortly thereafter when planting tall grafted vines.
In 2016, instead of the 6000 vines that we ordered, we received 4200 vines. We replanted vines in 2016, 2017, (had a break in 2018), 2019 and then the last 200 vines this year. Since there were "only" 200 vines to be replanted, our friends came to help us dig the holes. We couldn't have done this without our friends who helped us all along the way. Three nurseries and 6 years later, we are back up to a full vineyard.
This year, we tried something new with the nursery that we are working with. They created the custom graft in January, calloused over the graft union and we are the "nursery field". The live plants were shipped cross country and arrived on Monday. We opened the container and found 200 beautiful, green live plants.

We took one plant out of the crate and planted it:

Our friends came to help us on Tuesday, June 23, at 9 a.m. It was a cloudy, overcast day for most of the morning which was great for planting. The 200 vines spread over 5 rows were planted by noon!
I created this snapshot to summarize when our vineyard replanting occurred with the various varieties:

We still want to verify exactly how many vines are in each row. We will do that later! In the meantime, we want to thank all of our friends who came to help. Many of them said that it's starting to look like a real vineyard!

The Elusive Stigmatic Fluid

Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I went to check on our Chardonnay, which we know is the first to bloom and sure enough, the Chardonnay had just begun to bloom so we took some pictures. When we went home, I saw something in a few of my photos which gave me pause. It looked like a droplet of water on the top of the stigma on one of the flowers and then I saw it on another flower.
I recalled that I've blogged about this thing called stigmatic fluid in at least two of my posts: Events Post Capfall and in The Perilous Journey to Fruitset. Those blogposts contained these sentences: "Rain can dilute the stigmatic fluid and interfere with germination of the pollen grains" and "the pollen grains adhere to substances secreted on the stigma". I understood from my reading that rain during flowering is a bad thing, but now I have the visual reason why this is so.

At first, I thought that I might have mistaken a drop of dew for stigmatic fluid, so today, my husband and I took more photos in the hopes of photographically capturing this elusive droplet called the stigmatic fluid. Once you know what it looks like, it's not as elusive as I originally thought.

In Nick Dokoozlian's chapter called Grape Berry Growth and Development, which can be found online, he mentions that the stigmatic secretion consists primarily of sugars, proteins, and mineral nutrients essential for the subsequent development of the pollen tube.¹
So what happens if there is rain during flowering? We had that last year and it was not a pretty sight.

Yesterday, our Chardonnay was probably at the beginning stages of flowering and today, it is probably at more than 50% flowering. Fortunately for us, the grape flowers, and the elusive but important stigmatic fluid, we are in for a stretch of days with no rain.
References:
1. Nick K. Dokoozlian, Grape Berry Growth and Development.

1995 Mazis-Chambertin Domaine Maume

My husband pulled out this 1995 Mazis-Chambertin Domaine Maume to have with our dinner of smoked steak and baked potato. I found it really interesting that a Burgundy could stand up to a steak but this one did. It was a very full bodied and very smooth Pinot Noir and paired very nicely with the steak. We had half a bottle left so the following night, we paired the wine with Asian lettuce cups. While not so successful a pairing, the Pinot Noir didn't clash with the Asian meal. You can see that the wine threw a lot of sediment, but this did not diminish our enjoyment of the wine.
In doing a little on-line searching, I came across an article that mentioned that Moray Tawse purchased Domaine Maume in 2012. The article goes on to say that the wines will continue to be made under the label Domaine Maume, and Bertrand Maume will continue on with his winemaking and vineyard duties at the Domaine. Pascal Marchand, partner in the Nuits-Saint-Georges negotiant, Marchand and Tawse, will oversee the Domain’s winemaking, working closely with Bertrand Maume. Pascal was quoted as saying “Working with such great vineyards is very exciting. These are some of the best terroirs in Gevrey-Chambertin.”
We have an interesting connection. My husband remembered that Domaine Maume was sold but forgot who it was sold to until I told him what I found on-line. The back story is that we have had a wine from Tawse when we were invited to Canadian Thanksgiving and I wrote about it in a blogpost in 2012 called Thanksgiving and Tawse. During the dinner, the name, Pascal Marchand came up often and we followed Pascal Marchand's winemaking journey in a movie called Grand Cru.
It will be interesting to taste a more current version of the Mazis-Chambertin and compare it with the 1995.

Vintage 2020: June Update

On May 26, I wrote a blogpost called Vintage 2020: Got Rain Will Grow. At that time, we were working on disbudding. With all of the rain we received in May and two soaking rains that occurred on June 6 and June 11, our plants quickly went from disbudding to shoot thinning.
We began June with shoot thinning in the Chardonnay, which was the farthest along of our grape varieties. The next variety that required attention was the Barbera which I wrote about in a blogpost called Our Barbera has Flowers! Since we only had one row of Barbera with canes that we laid down, the shoot positioning of the Barbera went relatively quickly.
Work on the Auxerrois began on June 9th and we still have a few more vines that require shoot positioning. Here is a photo of the Auxerrois that have been shoot positioned and all of the leaves are acting as solar panels using a complex process called photosynthesis.

Working so closely with the vines allows us to come in contact with some interesting sights. While working in the Auxerrois, I came upon this Sphinx moth. It let me take numerous photos of it.

When I showed my husband my photos, he said, "I don't like that, I don't like that at all." We both know that the Sphinx moth caterpillar can cause extensive damage to grape vines. When we first planted our vines in 2013, we came upon the Sphinx moth caterpillar which I blogged about in Eumorpha pandorus: Beautiful But Voracious. While, I know that the caterpillar can devastate a vine, I just couldn't bring myself to kill the moth.

In the meantime, the Cabernet Franc decided to take off as well. So, we moved on to shoot positioning the Cabernet Franc. We have two clones of this variety, 214 and 327. We have noticed that the 214 blooms earlier than the 327 and therefore is a little ahead phenologically speaking than the 327. While shoot positioning the 214, I came across one bearing three sets of inflorescence!
All of this is keeping us very busy.

Leaf Pulling in Barbera

I came across this timely article called "Manual and mechanical leaf removal in the bunch zone (Vitis vinifera L., cv Barbera): effects on berry composition, health, yield and wine quality, in a warm temperate area". The results in this paper came from studies conducted in the northwest region of Italy between the years 2001-2003.
I read it with interest since this year we will hopefully have our first harvest of Barbera.
It turns out that Barbera is sensitive to fungal diseases, Botrytis cinerea grey mold in particular. Fruit-zone leaf removal is one of the most common summer practices aimed at an improvement of cluster microclimates, favoring grape ripening, reducing fungal diseases, and having an impact on the sensory properties of wines.
The ripening of Barbera is favored, especially in the latter stages, by a warm and dry climate, since as this variety has a highly acidic must and shows high vulnerability to Botrytis cinerea.
The authors found that the results of leaf pulling depended on the phenological stage of the grapes, the intensity of intervention, as well as on the climatic conditions of the season.
Climatic parameters that have an impact on berry composition, bunch health, vegetative growth and physiology include:

• temperature
• atmospheric humidity
• solar radiation
• water availability (rain or irrigation)

Leaf removal can improve cluster exposure and ventilation and the efficiency of pesticides, resulting not only in a considerable reduction in fungal diseases but also in better grape ripening and sensory properties of wines. Leaf removal however, had no impact on sour rot, a severe disease against which no effective protection product is currently available and it increased grape sensitivity to sunburn due to greater sunlight exposure.
References:
1. Silvia Guidoni, Gianluca Oggero, Bergio Cravero, Marco Rabino, Maria Carla Cravero, Paolo Balsari, Manual and mechanical leaf removal in the bunch zone (Vitis vinifera L., cv Barbera): effects on berry composition, health, yield and wine quality, in a warm temperate area, J. Int. Sci. Vigne Vin, 2008, 42, n°1, 49-58.

Our Barbera has Flowers!

We planted our Barbera in 2016 and this year we laid down a single guyot and we have flowers! While we were busy shoot positioning the Chardonnay, the Barbera decided to take off. Some of our shoots have almost reached the third catch wire. We are learning a lot about the habit of this vine. It is very different from our other vines. The flower has a tendril!
Our other varieties do not exhibit this mode of growth. What does the Barbera do with the tendril? All kinds of things that tendrils normally do, but this time with a flowering half.

We are shoot thinning and shoot positioning so that means spending some time to untangle the tendrils, very carefully. This is a picture of the before and after shoot thinning.

Weedwacking the Vineyard

We know that getting the weeds away from the vines is a good thing but since we don't use any herbicides, weed wacking is the poor man's alternative to keeping the growth under the vines tamed. We used to use a mechanical weeder but this year we don't want to disturb the soil and the microorganisms and have ended up weed wacking, in order to move toward a no-till vineyard.
We have been weed wacking our vineyard with a line trimmer. (Disclaimer: do not do this.) Every year, we weed wack our weeds that grow among the vines. This year, before weed wacking, we have been mowing the grass as well as the weeds as close to the vines as we can get to make our weed wacking a little easier. So far, we've done at least half of the vineyard. Here is a picture of what the vines look like before and after.

Our aspirational goal is to purchase something called a Fischer mower designed specifically for mowing between plants in an orchard. Here is what it looks like:

If my readers know of someone who wants to sell a Fischer mower cheap, please contact me!

2002 Kistler Occidental Vineyard Pinot Noir

A few days ago, my husband pulled out this 2002 Occidental Vineyard Cuvée Elizabeth Pinot Noir to drink with our meal. Let me tell you what the circumstances were. We were weed wacking our vineyard, (a blogpost to follow on that activity). This takes a lot of energy and after weed wacking, no one wants to cook dinner.

But, on this occasion, I made Chinese style barbecue pork rib with Stone Acres' new spring asparagus for dinner. The ribs had been marinating overnight in a mixture of 1/2 store bought hoisin sauce and 1/2 teriyaki sauce. I put the ribs into a Dutch oven and put it into the oven for 2 hours at 300 degrees. The asparagus was parboiled and I put butter on it. Simple! And I got to rest while the oven did the work.
How was the wine? It was inky, dark purple in the glass. The flavors were of black cherry, currants, cassis. The wine was unctuous and of medium-heavy body. It was the perfect pairing for the Chinese style pork ribs.
Kistler has a wonderful addition on their wine label where they tell you how many cases were made and what number bottle the one we had was. So, after drinking the wine, I was curious to know this number. When I looked at the label on the back of the bottle, I was shocked! The bottle we had was No. 0138 of only 3168 bottles produced! I asked my husband why we drank this wine with our dinner, didn't we have something less precious? He said "Wine is meant to be drunk!" I felt worthy!

Biochemical Changes Throughout Grape Berry Development and Fruit and Wine Quality - Putting It All Together

One of the papers that I think is a good read for an overview of grapes and wine making is called Biochemical Changes Throughout Grape Berry Development and Fruit and Wine Quality. It is also freely available.
Beginning on March 27, 2020 I've been summarizing the various sections listed in the contents. Each of the sections below is a link to the blogpost summary.
Introduction
Grape Berry Development and Ripening
Hormonal Control of Grape Berry Ripening
Water in Grape Berry and Wine
Potassium in Grape Berry and Wine
Sugar in Grape Berry and Wine
          Sugar transport and accumulation in berry
          Sugar Fermentation
Organic Acids in Grape Berry and Wine
          Tartaric acid metabolism
          Malic acid metabolism
          Organic acids in wine
Nitrogen in Grape Berry and Wine
Phenolics in Grape Berry and Wine
Grape Phenolics
          Biosynthesis of phenolic compounds in grape berry
          Phenolic ripeness and sugar ripeness
          Phenolics in wine
Odoriferous Compounds in Grape Berry and Wine - Varietal Aromas

References:
1. Carlos Conde, Paulo Silva, Natacha Fontes, Alberto C. P. Dias, Rui M. Tavares, Maria J. Sousa, Alice Agasse, Serge Delrot, Hernâni Gerós, Biochemical changes throughout Grape Berry development and fruit and wine quality, Food, 1(1), 1-22 ©2007 Global Science Books.