Vineyard Floor Management

I came across an article in my email feed that interested me regarding vineyard floor management. For the past few years, my husband and I have taken a no till approach to our vineyard floor. The vineyard floor is divided into that region where the vines are growing called the row and that region between the rows which my husband and I refer to as the alley.
The article lists the following benefits of planting dormant-season cover crops in the alleys:

• minimize runoff from winter rains
• protect soil from nutrient and sediment loss in winter storms
• suppress weeds
• harbor beneficial arthropods
• enhance vine mineral nutrition
• increase soil organic matter

Knowing the benefits of planting a cover crop, we did that in every other vineyard alley as well as the perimeter of our vineyard in 2013. In the rows not planted with a cover crop, we put in grass seeds. To this day, my husband says that he knows which rows had grass seeds and which rows had a cover crop.
The following photo shows the vineyard as it looked in the spring of 2014 compared to this year, spring, 2022. The photo shows the west side of the vineyard looking from south to north.

Here is what the article says are the benefits of putting in a cover crop:

• the clear benefits of cover crops were increased organic matter in the alleys and reduced sediment loss
• microbial biomass was increased in cover-cropped middles and there were indications that this effect extended to under the vines
• the benefits of cover crops are concentrated in the alleys where they were planted, but this benefit must be balanced with the compaction observed over time by the use of cultivation

In writing this blogpost, I found a blogpost that I wrote in November, 2013 called Methods of Seeding a Cover Crop, which brought a smile to our faces as the video shows the raw state of the vineyard at that time.

References:
1. Richard Smith, Larry Bettiga, Michael Cahn, Kendra Baumgartner, Louise E. Jackson and Tiffany Bensen, "Vineyard loor management affects soil, plant nutrition, and grape yield and quality", California Agriculture, Volume฀62,฀Number฀4.

Congratulations Eddy Naim! Lebanese Winemaker

We recently saw the movie Wine and War about winemaking in Lebanon. It is a story about the brothers Serge and Ronald Hochar making wine during a civil war. Watching the movie made me appreciate the wines that Serge and Ronald made at Chateau Musar in the Bekaa Valley. In 2021, we were treated to a tasting of a nearly 40 years old 1982 Chateau Musar. The wine was still youthful, full of red berry fruit balanced by a backend of soft tannins.
I allude to the movie Wine and War because a week ago, a friend, whom I have never met, Eddy Naim, who makes wine in the Bekaa Valley at Chateau Qanafer won the winemaker of the year and I messaged him a congratulations to which he replied!
Let me back up a little. I met Eddy when both of us were in the same online course offered by U.C. Davis Enology and Viticulture. Disgression: if you are new to growing grape vines and making wine, you should think about taking this course. Not only do you learn about the industry, you can make some lasting friendships.
The online retailer, Naked Wines, named Eddy the winemaker of the year. The article that I read was in LLM - Luxury Lifestyle Magazine. This award means that Eddy will be able to make a 100% Cinsault wine he has always wanted to make, but never had the chance to.

Congratulations, Eddy!
References:
1. Kevin Pilley, "All you need to know about Lebanese wines and the top producers to look out for", LLM - Luxury Lifestyle Magazine, February 17, 2022.

2019 Westport Rivers River Flatts Red

When we left Rob Russell after visiting him, Rob gave us a bottle of his 2019 River Flatts Red. We recently opened the bottle and had it with our meal of marinated flank steak and Mexican beans and rice. The wine was clear dark purple in the glass. On the first night, the aroma was muted but on the second night it opened up with spice and black cherries and the flavor was one of rich fruit and spice with a hint of tobacco. What amazed us about the Marquette, was that if we were doing a blind taste test, we probably couldn't have picked out that the wine was made from a hybrid grape.
My husband texted Rob about the Marquette and Rob added that the wine also has 45% Petite Pearl in it and was aged in neutral French oak. Marquette and Petite Pearl are both complex hybrids created to be winter hardy and resistant to fungal attacks and, as we learned, makes a delicious red wine!

References:
1. 1. J. Robinson, J. Harding and J. Vouillamoz, Wine Grapes - A complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours, pg 599-600 and 795, Allen Lane 2012 ISBN 978-1-846-14446-2.

Beginning Pruning in the Vineyard

Mother Nature presented us with two days in the high 40's, Friday, February 11 and Saturday, February 12 and we took advantage of it to go to the vineyard to begin our pruning duties. We have learned some lessons from our pruning attempts in 2018 when we were close to having our vineyard fully replanted. Prior to that, pruning duties were relatively easy but after 2018, we realized that we really needed a strategy.
So on April 26, 2018, I summarized our take home lessons:

1) Cut the tendrils off of the catch wires and move the Agfast

2) Make the major cuts of last year's shoots

3) Cut tendrils and larger summer laterals off of this year's canes

4) Lay down and secure this year's canes

One thing that did not get put on the list was to remove the cuttings from the vineyard, that can in fact, constitute a huge task. Here is a tabular recap of the time we took to prune the vineyard for each season from 2018-2021.

Begin Pruning	Pre-Pruning: Cut Tendrils, Remove Agfast	Cut Tops	Final Cut	Lay Down Canes	End Pruning: Pick Up Cuttings
March 24, 2018	April 3- April 22	April 9-April 18	March 24-April 29	March 26-May 1	April 3-May 3
March 18, 2019	March 18-May 4	-	-	April 18-May 4	May 4
Feb. 1, 2020	February 1-March 6	March 14-April 4	March 28-April 23	March 31-April 25	April 25
March 3, 2021	March 3- April 18	March 17-April 19	March 12-May 3	March 30-May 3	May 13
Feb. 11, 2022	February 11-

In 2019 we tried to do all of the pre-pruning tasks as well as the final pruning in one go, contrary to what we learned from pruning in 2018. In 2019, we took out the vineyard cuttings on tarps and that seemed to help the overall task. Since last year, when we had all 36 of our vineyard rows populated with vines, each task took much longer.
For example, on Thursday and Friday, my husband and I split the tasks of removing the Agfast and cutting the tendrils. Removing the Agfast makes cutting the tendrils easier, so that task is the first task that needs to be done. Cutting the tendrils may take up to 2 hours per row. We have 3 rows with Agfast and tendrils removed and 2 rows with Agfast removed. The next time that we are in the vineyard, my husband will begin cutting the tops of last year's fruiting canes.
A few other changes that we think will facilitate the process of pruning: (1) we will leave the netting where it is and (2) we will leave the cut canes where it is until we can remove them by bringing our trailer into the vineyard.

2022 Vineyard Planting and Plant Count Update

We have been in the process of replanting our vineyard since 2016, after having lost 90% of our newly planted vines in 2014. This is what our vineyard looks like now in chart form showing the varieties that we are currently growing and when they were planted. We are pretty much back to where we started in 2013 with the number of vines planted but we do have a few gaps.

Those few gaps is what is causing a bit of a hiccup. Last year, we were supposed to get green grafts to put in our vineyard but that didn't work out so this year, we are trying to of figure out how we can source a small amount of custom grafted vines for the replanting that we must do.
So, on Thursday, February 3, we paid a visit to Rob Russell of Westport Rivers Vineyard and Winery. We initially visited Rob in May, 2011 when we were contemplating growing tall grafted vines in our vineyard. Rob's vineyard was grown with tall grafted vines and at that time, he was already making his own grafted vines.
On this visit, Rob showed us how he made his grafted vines and showed us his callousing chamber which is maintained at 80 degrees F and high humidity. After callousing for approximately 25 days, the vines are planted outdoors to spend a year in the vineyard. In the fall, the vines are removed and put in dormancy for the following planting season. Rob mentioned that he tried green grafting and the number of survivors of the green grafts were very poor in comparison to creating grafts in the standard way. We have also observed that the survival rate of the green grafted Auxerrois that we planted in 2020 was between 40-50%.
The discussion we had with Rob was a very informative and optimistic one and we left with the idea that in the future, we will learn how to make our tall grafted vines under Rob's guidance.
In addition to the time that Rob spent showing us how he and his crew made their grafted vines, Rob generously sent us off with 4 of the wines that they make. I will be blogging about them in future blogposts.

Vintage 2022: February Update

This February update begins on Friday, January 28, 2022 when we were bracing for a snowstorm headed our way in the evening. Here is what the forecast looked like:

In addition to a heavy snowfall, we were in for gale force winds, a double whammy. We were so fortunate to receive snowfall that was at the lower end of the forecast and luckier still when we were able to avoid power outages. The snow began during the evening hours on January 28 and continued throughout the day on Saturday, January 29. Along the shoreline, we probably received a total of approximately 16 inches of snow.
The only creature stirring was this one photo that our hunter's trail camera took of a very healthy looking wolf up at the vineyard.

On Ground Hog Day, the news was 6 more weeks of winter. February 4 brought a lot of rain which pretty much washed away the snow that we received at the end of January and didn't turn into a freezing rain and icy mix that was predicted.
The forecast for the following week includes temperatures in the 40's so it is back to the vineyard for us. Another year of pruning to be done before the season begins!

2020 Kumeu River Maté's Chardonnay

The last wine in our Great Chardonnay Tasting was the 2020 Kumeu River Maté's Chardonnay. The tasting notes provided before hand was:

I'm not sure if I was getting tasting fatigue, but the Kumeu River, although it was a very good wine with no flaws, did not really excite my tastebuds. I enjoyed drinking it but the aroma and flavors were not like the Domaine Leflaive for me. One thing that my husband and I both agreed upon after the tasting was that we need to focus on fewer wines and let the wines open up through the evening.
The final courses that we paired with the wine tasting was a chicken with poblano with corn salsa and a chocolate avocado mousse.

We want to thank everyone who participated in The Great Chardonnay Tasting. All the wines were stellar and it was really difficult to say one was much better than the other. They were all on the same playing field just some slightly better than the others. It was truly a remarkable adventure in wine tasting!