This History of the World Through the Wine Lens

When I was reading Hugh Johnson's Vintage: The Story of Wine published in 1989, I was keenly aware of the fact that the history of the world and the story of wine were intricately intertwined.
Recently, I thumbed through the book again and found myself going from 5000 years ago to the present time in 2 hours or so. It was quite the experience. When I looked on the Internet, I found that Hugh Johnson had made some videos about the history of wine. So, if you don't have time to read the book, you can learn about the history of wine in bite size pieces, as Hugh Johnson mentions here:

Or if you have 2 hours to spare, you can watch this: VINTAGE Volume I A history of Wine HUGH JOHNSON
References:
1. Hugh Johnson, Vintage: The Story of Wine, Simon and Schuster, 1989.

Critical Stages of Inflorescence (Flower) Formation

Doing our rubberbanding task has allowed us to get Up Close and Personal With Our Buds, but without x-ray vision, it's difficult to know how fruitful our buds are. The fruitfulness of a bud is a two year process and conditions in year one and year two affect how fruitful our vines will be. It is always a good thing to take another look at inflorescence formation even though I have blogged extensively about the flowering process:
The Mysterious Life of Grape Buds
Conditions Influencing Inflorescence Differentiation
Grapevine Flower Buds
Grapevine Inflorescence
Flowering in the Vineyard
Grapevine Inflorescence Formation---Parts 1 and 2
Inflorescence Formation Part 3
In reading Vasconcelos et al., The Flowering Process of Vitis vinifera: A Review I came upon a good schematic that might help to envision all the processes going on during budbreak.

I always find that a diagram is helpful in understanding what this cycle looks like. So, here is one of my go to diagrams of shoot growth from Jackson.²

In Summary:
Critical stages of flower formation

• Season 1: induction, initiation, and early differentiation
• Season 2: differentiation at budburst

For more information regarding how inflorescence fruitfulness is influenced by climatic conditions, please go to Conditions Influencing Inflorescence Differentiation
. References:
1. M. Carmo Vasconcelos, Marc Greven, Chris S. Winefield, Mike C.T. Trought, Victoria Raw, The Flowering Process of Vitis vinifera: A Review, Am J Enol Vitic., December 2009 60: 411-434.
2. Ronald Jackson, Wine Science Third Edition, Elsevier, 2008, pg. 68.

2013 Palazzo Della Torre

We had this 2013 Allegrini Palazzo Della Torre the label will tell you much of what you need to know. It is a red wine made from two grapes Corvina and Rondinella. A few nights ago we had the 2012 Zenato Ripassa, which is also made from the Corvina and Rondinella grapes. While the Ripassa is made by passing the juice of the once fermented grapes over the skins and lees of the fermented Amarone grapes, in the case of the Palazza Della Torre, only some of the grapes used in making this wine is left to dry. We have encountered this technique used by Winemaker Andrzej Lipinski at Colaneri Winery located in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
We had this wine with pizza after working in the vineyard, neither of us wanted to cook. That is our excuse. At less than $20.00 a bottle, this is a wine well worth stockpiling in your wine cave.

Up Close and Personal With Our Buds

Recently, when my husband and I were out in the vineyard, beginning our vine rubberband task, my husband noted that on some nodes, there were two buds. In the somewhat fuzzy photo at the left, there is one bud that is clearly larger than the smaller bud that has a bit of cottony stuff.
The larger bud, we assume is the dormant bud. The dormant bud has many names:

• compound bud
• winter bud
• eye
• latent bud

Although the dormant bud looks like just one bud, it is really comprised of 3 buds, the primary, secondary and tertiary buds, that is why it is also called the compound bud.¹

Nature is really wonderful, when you think about this compound bud. During spring, if the primary bud should be killed due to an untimely frost or other events, the secondary bud can takeover. The secondary bud may also have inflorescence (be fruitful), and keeping the grapevine alive by sending up a shoot is always a good thing. There is still one more chance that the grapevine has in case of failure of the secondary bud. The tertiary bud is standing by.

One of the seminal references that other texts refer to was written in 1974 by Charlotte Pratt called Vegetative anatomy in cultivated grapes, A review. This is one of the reading materials provided by the U.C. Davis online course. Not only does it give a detailed look at the various parts of the grapevine, it also provides a glossary at the end of the review. It's a great reference to have. In reading the paper, I came across a word orthostichies (what?), the glossary defines it as being: a sequence of leaves one above another on a stem.
Who knew?
References:
1. Pratt, C., Vegetative anatomy in cultivated grapes, A review, American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, 1974, 25:131-150.