Frizzante Wine Bar Champagne Class II

This past week, we attended the Frizzante Wine Bar and Speakeasy Champagne Class Part II. Every Wednesday, Steven, the owner teaches a class about wine. This was the second week that featured champagne. We went to the First Class where Jason Starkey stepped in to help Steven. Part II featured the following champagnes:

Steven began the class by grabbing our attention saying that Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park and Champagne have something in common...the end of the dinosaurs and the creation of the chalk layer in Champagne that is critical to making this bubbly wine. Steven explained about the 5 regions in Champagne that make the bubbly stuff, taught us about grand cru (great growth) vineyards, and about grower producers. One of the interesting champagnes that we tasted was the Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne. Initially, this champagne was the vision of Nicolas Feuillatte, however, in 1986, Feuillatte relinquished the brand to the Centre Vinicole de la Champagne (CVC), which would later become the iconic Centre Vinicole – Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte. This move by Feuillatte united 82 cooperatives in Champagne giving the brand access to 2,250 hectares of vineyards. We have had this champagne before and my husband knew that it was made by a commune. It is available locally and sells for approximately $35.00, a very good value. We enjoyed the evening, sitting in the company of 6 other people, as well as our friend Barry. Every Wednesday, The Frizzante Wine Bar and Speakeasy conducts a wine appreciation class, the next class is about the red wines of the Old World.

We're Lineposting!

The time is finally here! We are putting in our line posts. We have had our trellis material since late June of 2013 soon after we put in our vines (it's coming up on the 1 year anniversary of our vineyard planting!). This is a photo from our Landini. I am sitting in the driver's seat because it takes two people to put in a line post. Actually, three would be ideal, but two works. This is what we fine tuned this task to be: we first marked where the line posts would go with spray paint around the perimeter of our vineyard. We put in line posts on the 4 corners of the vineyard as well as the

mid point on the north-south row and then strung a string from one post down one row and laid down all the line posts on the east side of the vineyard. My husband taught me how to drive the Landini and work the hydraulics while he positions the line post and uses the hydraulic pounder to drive the line post into the ground. Here I am in the Landini, taking a photo of the mirror looking back at my husband checking our work.
We were getting the hang of it and finished the first row when the whatyoumacallit that you put on top of the line post to allow the hydraulic pounder to pound in the line post snapped! It didn't break at the welding joint, the metal broke! I have to admit it was a nice break (for me), and when we went home, we ordered 5 more just to have spares around.

Spined Soldier Beetle: Hello to Good Predators

Today, while we were out in the vineyard, my husband eyed this little beetle resting on one of our vines. We've already forgotten most of what we encountered last year, but a search on the internet brought up some familiar images. We knew that this was some kind of beetle, but was it good or bad? The brown marmorated stink bug is bad, but a spined soldier beetle is very good. A good reference to determine which is which can be found here:
Look-Alike Insects
Last year, we were indiscriminately destroying things that we saw in the vineyard before we knew what it was and one that we deeply regretted was destroying the eggs of the spined soldier beetle. I feel that the eggs of the spined soldier beetle are one of Nature's little beauties. In looking back at my notes, this particular beetle that we saw is a spined soldier beetle Podisus maculiventris (Say), so welcome back, little guy! Be fruitful and multiply!
References:
1. University of Florida, Life Cycle of the Spined Soldier Beetle
2. Cornell University Biological Control Site
3. Stop BMSB

Various Stages of Dormancy

We were asked by our vineyard consultant to spray lime sulfur on our dormant vines to control overwintering diseases that could be in our vineyard. He stressed that the buds should be in their closed state because application of lime sulfur to a bud that is in the budburst stage can burn the nascent leaves. We were seeing all different stages of dormant buds which prompted me to look at more photos of grape buds in their dormant stage. I found a really good research paper on the internet: Adoption of a system for identifying grapevine growth stages, authored by B. G. Coombe. In this research paper, I found detailed descriptions of the various stages of vine phenology based on the Eichhorn Lorenz system. I took photos of our Chenin blanc buds and put it against the silhouettes provided in the paper and came up with the following:

At the moment, approximately 3% (or about 200 out of 6804 vines) of our buds are at stage 5 which is the "rosette of leaf tips visible" stage. Interestingly, most of these vines are located at the south end of the vineyard and it doesn't matter which variety it is i.e. Auxerrois, Chenin blanc or Chardonnay. It appears, however, that our Chenin blanc are the most advanced and our Auxerrois are the laggards.
References:
1. B. G. Coombe, Adoption of a system for identifying grapevine growth stages, Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research 1, 100-110, 1995.