Anatomy of an Endpost

In looking back at my blog, we have been thinking about our endposts since before the dawn of our vineyard. The blogpost Endpost Designs was written on April, 2013 even before our vineyard was planted. Little did we know at that time that we would select the anchored endpost design, because out thoughts were leaning toward putting in an H-brace. Reality set in as we thought about the costs of putting in black locust for our endposts. Black locust is a good choice for endposts unless you find out like we did that straight black locust is difficult to find and it can cost up to $25.00 a post. We were able to find a dealer in Barkhamstead, CT who was selling reasonably straight black locust for $10 for a 10-foot length. We ordered and received our trellising material in late June, 2013 where it sat for almost 1 year. We began putting in our lineposts in May, 2014 and our endposts in November, 2014.

One thing that we were unclear about was how to secure the endpost to the ground anchor. My husband settled on the GPAK system from GRIPPLE. Our favorite go-to farmer friends, the Holmbergs also recommended that we use the GPAK.
So, my husband began installing the GPAK in late May.
I took a picture of what the close up of the endpost now looks like with the GPAK trellis anchor installed.

There are all kinds of endpost designs out there, but when we were trying to determine exactly how to finish it off, the devil is really in the details.

My husband purchased these fasteners from Big Heel Fasteners, the link provides much more information. The nice thing about these fasteners is that you can screw it in. If you don't like where you put it on your endpost, you can easily unscrew it and reposition it. Lastly, in order to make the GPAK wire visible, to avoid running into it, we wrapped the wire with fluorescent orange tubing.

It's only taken us 3 years!

2014 Waitsburg Cellars Cheninières

We are always on a lookout for good Chenin Blanc wines to try and my husband found this one at a local package store. It was a 2014 Waitsburg Cellars Cheninières dubbed, "The Aromatics". A few weekends ago, our son Brett and his wife, Laura flew in from Seattle, Washington on a red-eye flight to spend the weekend in Stonington, attending their friend's wedding. On the first night that they were here, after going to wedding ceremony Part 1, and coming back sans dinner, and looking for all the world, like Sleepless from Seattle, my husband made a succulent fresh clam linguine dinner for the 4 of us. This wine, from their backyard in Waitsburg, Washington, was the accompanying potent potable. We liked the acidity of this wine which complimented the richness of the clam linguine.
On the Internet, I learned that the winemaker, Paul Gregutt has served as the Northwest regional editor and reviewer for Wine Enthusiast magazine since 1998, and wrote the “Wine Adviser” column in The Seattle Times from 2002 until April of this year. His book, Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide, is considered a definitive resource.
That same article, explains that the name Cheninières, is a play on Savennières, the great Chenin Blanc–producing region of Loire Valley in France. Paul Gregutt also makes another Chenin Blanc called Chevray, a clever reference to Vouvray, another great Chenin Blanc-producing region in Loire, that makes one of our favorite Chenins, The (italics, mine) Domaine Huet.
We need to revisit this Cheninières and try the Waitsburg Cellars Chevray as well.

Vineyard Scouting: Turn the Leaf Over

It's a good thing to go through the vineyard every so often. I did that yesterday while my husband tried his new weeding attachment. The vines looked fine, they were growing, but I came upon this partially skeletonized leaf. I belong to the Anonymous Society of Leaf Turners, headed by Pamm Cooper, whom I met through the University of Connecticut Extension Master Gardener Program. In Connecticut, a good place to learn about the latest in flora and fauna is at the UConn Home & Garden Center on Facebook. What Pamm taught us in the Master Gardener course is that when you see a leaf that has been partially

skeletonized, like this one, you need to turn the leaf over and see if you can figure out who is doing the damage.
Of the many times that I have walked the vineyard and turned leaves over, this is one time that I thought, "Caught you!" It was a tiny green caterpillar. It appears to me to be a member of the Sphinx moth caterpillar but I haven't been able to positively ID it.

Vintage Notes: Spring 2015

It has been a cool, dry spring. The last time we had any measurable rainfall occurred on April 23, when we had 3/4-inches of rain. The vines have been surviving on the water that was in the soil (field capacity) from the winter snow pack that we had never experienced in the 30+ years that we have lived here. Altough some of the plants were actually growing despite the lack of rain, we were concerned that the continued lack of rainfall would take it's toll on the some of the vines that we had transplanted.
Mother Nature answered our plea for rain on Sunday evening with a little sprinkle and with sporadic rainfall on Monday, June 1st accompanied by cool 50^o Fahrenheit temperature. It's still sprinkling today and cool. We'll need to check our rain gauge to determine what the rainfall was in the vineyard. I'll report back. We went to the land saw that between early Monday morning into Tuesday afternoon, we had 1-1/4 inch of rain!