Streamlining Pruning Tasks in the Vineyard

It's taken many seasons and each year, we try to streamline our spring pruning duties in the vineyard. We begin by cutting the tops of last year's shoots which are now hardened canes. In the beginning, we would just throw the cuttings in the middle of the row and then come back to gather them up and take it out of the vineyard using a tarp. After a few years, we began piling the cuttings at each linepost to give us a visual guide as to where the cuttings were. This actually speeded up the process and then the big breakthrough came when my husband procured a sled from Alaska to remove the cuttings from each row.
This is a picture from last year where our friend Barry came to help my husband with the removal of all the cuttings.

Another thing that we implimented last year was to lower all of the nets to the lowest notch on our lineposts. Every year, we always talked about how we should be lowering our nets to make work easier for us during the growing season before we have to deploy our nets. The stumbling block was always "how would we secure the nets". The way we secured the nets had to be easy, preferrably not involving any cutting which might inadvertantly damage the netting. After much brain storming, we came up with velcro and that has made all the difference!

At the end of harvest last year we lowered the nets and velcroed the netting to each line post, which gave us a leg up on our pruning tasks this spring.
The first thing we did this spring was to remove all of the Agfast, the little black ties, shown circled in red in the picture above, that we put into the trellis to prevent the new shoots from growing into each other and to allow for airflow. In the past, it took an entire month to remove the Agfast, but with the nets in the low position, it made it possible to see where all those little black ties were and this year, it took us only 15 days to remove all the Agfast.
The next improvement in our method was the realization that we could cut last year's fruiting cane from this year's potential fruiting cane while leaving it still attached to the trellis. This pre-cut puts all of the energy of growth into the few remaining shoots!

The images above show our workflow. First, cut the tops off last year's growth, pile the cuttings at the linepost and then make a pre-pruning cut indicating what we will remove from the vineyard, leaving what we will use as this year's fruiting canes. We feel that this pre-pruning is important because as the vines begin to wake up, all of the energy of growth will go into the few canes that we have left. At the moment, 20 out of the 36 rows of vines have had this pre-pruning cut made.
After 13 years, we are feeling like we are finally getting the hang of being grape farmers!

Spring Sighting in the Vineyard

We are in the vineyard, doing our first prunings. While I am focussed on just pruning, my husband is pruning as well as watching out for interesting and unusual things in the vineyard. A few days ago, while we were working together, he came across the first ladybugs in our vineyard. The ladybug looked a little weird and was moving quite slowly. It had some yellow stuff on it's wings. Although it looked like pollen, when we took some close up shots of the ladybug, the yellow stuff looked like this:

At home, we learned that this lady bug was infected with the Hesperomyces virescens fungus and what we were seeing was the yellow fruiting bodies of the fungus. I came upon an excellent and freely available article called "Integrative taxonomy reveals hidden species within a common fungal parasite of ladybirds", that contained a very magnified view of the fungus:¹

This illustration shows that what we perceived as pollen were groups of the fungal thalli. The illustration on the left shows a single thallus in all it's magnified glory!
We speculate that these ladybugs overwintered in a sheltered place and were out in the spring weather. When and where they became infected with the fungus is a mystery but now we know that the yellow stuff on the ladybugs are fungi!
References:
1. Haelewaters, D., De Kesel, A. & Pfister, D.H., Integrative taxonomy reveals hidden species within a common fungal parasite of ladybirds, Sci Rep 8, 15966 (2018).

2016 Ashes and Diamonds Cabernet Franc

My husband was very interested in trying a bottle of Ashes and Diamonds and he got his hands on this 2016 Cabernet Franc.

His interest in this wine was peaked by the fact that Steve Matthiasson, one of their winemakers made this particular vintage. We do like the fact that the back label includes information such as the harvest date, pH, TA and winemaker. We tried to see Steve Matthiasson when we visited Napa recently, but had no luck.
My husband made his special smoked steak which we had with baked potato and a side salad. This wine already has some age on it which is very nice. To my palate it was still very young with a tannic finish. This particular wine was made from a blend of grapes from vineyards located in Los Carneros, Oakville Knoll and Yountville.
Ashes and Diamonds is located in Napa Valley.

Perhaps the next time that we are in Napa, we will put Ashes and Diamonds on our to-visit agenda.

Dinner with Friends

On Sunday, we attended a dinner that our friends had planned in order for my husband and another friend, Christy to talk about living in California in the early 70's. But, it became more than that. My husband made his salmon cakes for an appetizer and we had "slow" food. The conversation flowed and we enjoyed the evening.
Christy provided the wine for the meal which was grilled lamb chops, green beans almondine and crispy potatoes. We were treated to a 1993 Louis Jadot Chapelle Chambertin and a 2000 Chateau Pontet Canet. The ullage on the 1993 Louis Jadot was at the shoulder and the cork was pushed in a little, but the wine was still hanging in there tasting very much of burgundy. The 2000 Pontet Canet was still youthful, redolent with blackberries with a long finish.

Good friends, good food, good wine! You can never plan to have a memorable evening it just happens!

Vintage 2025: It's March and That Means It's Time to Prune

The weather is becoming warmer so there is no excuse! It's time to get to the vineyard and begin our pruning duties. The first thing to do is to trim off the tops of last year's growth.
When we went to the vineyard on Monday morning, we had some company.

It was Gavin from the tree trimming crew! He brought some big guns! Unfortunately, Gavin was not here to help us prune our vineyard. Gavin and Colton were here to trim up the trees that are currently dormant and very near the power lines owned by EverSource. While we were pruning, we were able to see Colton skillfully maneuvering the helicopter to get the saw to the trees near the powerlines. Colton and Gavin used our south field as a heliport. They were great! They let my husband take these movies of their operation. Here is Colton in the helicoptor:

That's Gavin, ground crew in blue and Colton, helicopter pilot in green. We enjoyed the diversion from our work, but now it is back to manual pruning for us!

SOMM TV: Liber Pater Wines

During the winter, (wait, it's spring!) we are engaged in our continuing education in wine. This past week, we were watching an episode of SOMM TV which featured the Liber Pater Wines. Loïc Pasquet is the winemaker at Liber Pater, but he insists that he is a vigneron. His claim to fame is that he is currently acknowledged as selling the most expensive wine in the world.
How did this come about? Just a litle bit of history. During the time of Napoleon III, when Napoleon commissioned the 1855 classification, the grapes were grown on pre-phylloxera soils. After phylloxera came to Europe and caused the near extinction of grape vines, in order to survive, almost all European grapevines were grafted on to American rootstock. Some claim that own-rooted vines have a different flavor profile than grafted vines.
Enter Loïc Pasquet! After pursuing engineering studies in Dijon, Pasquet became side-tracked by the world of fine wine, and most specifically by a desire to (re)discover the ancient grape varieties of pre-phylloxera Bordeaux. Guided by his mentor, Savoyard Michel Grigard, who was instrumental in bringing back Mondeuse, Altesse, and Jacquère to the Alpine vineyards, Pasquet began his quest to ressurect pre-phylloxera Bordeaux varieties such as Castet, Pardotte, Tarnay, Petite Vidure, Mancin, Camaralet, and Saint-Macaire. To date, Pasquet has “exhumed” 14 varieties in total!¹
Pasquet identified the small commune of Ladiras with its “magnificent gravel outcrop” and excellent drainage, and a “cocktail of sandy topsoil” as an excellent location to grow his own-rooted vines.
Pasquet farms two plots, Liber Pater and Denarius. Pasquet says that both Liber Pater and Denarius wines are 100 percent ungrafted, organic, and made with native grape varieties. Of his two vineyards, he says that, in the Denarius vineyard, “we have more clay, so the wine is very soft, while Liber Pater is very elegant, more for the gods.” ²

What is it that is so unusual about Loïc Pasquet wines? The main grape variety used in both Liber Pater and Denarius is Petite Vuidure, an old name for Cabernet Sauvignon. It is blended with the nearly extinct varieties Mancin, Castets, Saint-Macaire, Pardotte, Gros Cabernet, and Cabernet Goudable, as well as Tarnay Coulant.
After the 2015 vintage, the wines at Liber Pater are being made from 100 percent native varieties and 100 percent ungrafted vines (Franc de Pied). Pasquet produces only 500 bottles a year. Some years he doesn't make any wine from Liber Pater. What will a bottle of Liber Pater cost you? $33,000.00! Pasquet will say that what he is offering is time traveling in a glass. An opportunity to taste a wine that Napoleon III might have enjoyed from a pre-phylloxera, own rooted vineyard.
Is this resurrection of ancient varietals on own rooted vines enough to justify the price? I for one will never know. Sad.
References:
1. Simon Field, Liber Pater: The shock of the old, The World of Fine Wine, August 17, 2023.
2. Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen, Why a $33,000 Wine Made From Rare Grapes Is Polarizing the Wine World, Robb Report, October 27, 2024.

What is Auxerrois?

We grow Auxerrois in our vineyard. Many people are not familiar with this grape variety, so I thought I would do a little research and blog about it. The name itself can be pronounced as either "awk-ser-WAH" or "oak-sair-wah" or even "oh-sehr-WAH". Genetic testing suggests that Auxerrois is a sibling of Chardonnay, both being offspring of Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc.
Auxerrois can be found in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Luxembourg with a handful of plantings in North America and South Africa. In the United States, Auxerrois has found a home in Oregon and on the Leelanau Peninsula located on the 45th Parallel.
In our vineyard, the Auxerrois is not the first variety to budbreak in the spring. However, the Auxerrois is the first to ripen and the first grape that we harvest. We watch the Brix and when it gets to around 17, we also test for the pH and the total acidity. We want to be able to keep the acidity so that the Auxerrois is nicely balanced.

As far as we know, we are the only vineyard and winery on the east coast growing and making Auxerrois wine.
References:
1. Layla Schlack, Understanding Auxerrois Wine, Wine Enthusiast, October 17, 2023.
2. Aurora Cellars, Discovering Auxerrois: A Hidden Gem in the World of White Wine,

Racking Our 2022 Auxerrois

This past week, we racked our 2022 Auxerrois from the four stainless steel barrels that they were in, into a 240 gallon IBC tank with fittings. Before racking the wine, we tasted the wine from each barrel and they were slightly different in aromas and flavors so racking and blending the wines is a good thing to do.
The 2022 Auxerrois had the following numbers:

Variety	Harvest Date	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Auxerrois	September 2, 2022	3097 lbs	248 gal	20.0	3.16	7.1 g/L

The wine coming through the site-glass was clear and light yellow in color. The racking of the four barrels took about one hour. We think we ended up with approximately 225 gallons in the holding/mixing tank. The cleaning of the barrels took another 3 hours. As is always the case, the cleaning takes much more time than the time spent actually working with the wine! While we cleaned the barrels, I noticed that the tartrate crystals coming out of the barrels were the largest that I have ever seen!

Of all of the vintages of Auxerrois that we have harvested and made into wine, the 2022 has been the most abundant. We are crossing our fingers that this year we will have another year as good as our 2022.