For farmers, Labor Day is exactly that, a day of labor. We are busy clothes pinning our Chardonnay grapes that are ripening quickly. For that, we had stellar help from our daughter who made the trek down from Worcester on Saturday and helped with securing our Chardonnay from birds.
Today, we are working in the Chenin Blanc shoot tucking, leaf pulling and cleaning the graft union in hopes of lowering our nets on the Chenin Blanc as soon as possible.
It's the time of the year to update the annual cycle of growth chart and fill in the dates of veraison for our 6 grape varieties.
We keep track of the major events in the vintage, veraison being a very important one. I recently blogged about
Vintage Notes 2025: The Auxerrois is at Veraison. The next variety to enter veraison this year was the Chardonnay, followed by the Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Chenin Blanc and finally the Barbera.
Here are the grape varieties and what they look like at veraison.
It was interesting this year to watch the red varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Barbera change color. The Cabernet Sauvignon was the first to enter veraison and by the time the Cabernet Franc was at veraison, the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes had all changed into a deep purple color. The warm days of late August worked their magic on the red varieities.
