The State of Our Buds

Buds can be a true sign of the cold spring that we have had. Compared to last year, on this very same day, our buds in 2017 were significantly more advanced.
We finished up pruning and laying down all of the canes in preparation for this year and this is what our buds look like:

The weather forecast for this coming week is a little hopeful with temperatures in the 70's on Wednesday and Thursday. However, for the rest of the week the temperatures are in the 60's!

Vintage 2018: Spring Chores

We began our pruning chores in late March, which is sooner than we have in the past, but we are realizing that it is not early enough, given the number of plants we now have to manage.
The pruning tasks can be divided into the following:

• 1) Cutting the tendrils off of the catch wires and moving the Agfast
• 2) Making the major cuts of last year's shoots
• 3) Cutting tendrils and larger summer laterals off of this year's canes
• 4) Layng down and securing this year's canes

Our friends came to help us with the first task. Doing that alone can save us 1-1/2 hours per row, (we have 36 rows). We then go back so my husband can make the major cut of last year's "lay down cane" with his battery operated shears and then I follow him and clean up and lay down this year's fruiting cane. The last three tasks takes us 2 hours per row.
One can make all the projections about how long tasks will take and establish goals, but Mother Nature will still have her way. You know the saying, April showers bring May flowers, well, we had that in spades this April, with even a few snow days sprinkled in.

Good news, bad news: I am not overly complaining because the snow/rain/wind days gives us a chance to recharge our batteries, but pruning is a race against bud break. With the temperatures being lower than normal for April, our buds are lagging behind.

Chardonnay Tasting

Recently, we had some friends over to do a side-by-side blind Chardonnay tasting. My husband wrapped 4 different Chardonnays in brown bags and had 4 glasses one for each Chardonnay. We did this because we feel that Chardonnay can be made in various styles that range from oaky, buttery, acid packed to austere.
We chose 4 Chardonnays, one from Australia, Burgundy, California and Oregon. Although we did tell our friends the country/state of origin, our friends had to guess where the Chardonnay came from and any other information they wanted to provide.
One of the wines was definitely more yellowish in color, but it was not oxidized. It was just yellow. Another wine had a very sulfury nose. The women liked the French and Oregon wine the best. But one of us did like the Australian wine. This just goes to show that the various styles of Chardonnay has an appeal to different people.
Bottom line, we had fun doing this!

A phylogenetic analysis of the grape genus (Vitis L.): Part 2

After reading the publication A phylogenetic analysis of the grape genus (Vitis L.) reveals broad reticulation and concurrent diversification during neogene and quaternary climate change, I found myself in a rabbit hole, trying to understand terminology that was quite foreign to me in order to follow the conclusions contained in the article.
To aid in the determination of when and how the major branches of the genus Vitis occurred, the researchers relied on the grapevine molecular clock contained within the DNA and fossil records including:

• the oldest reliable Vitis seeds dating from the Paleocene (65.5-55.8 Ma)
• the divergence of Vitaceae and Leeaceae (stem age of Vitaceae), estimated at 90.82 – 90.65 Ma, based on a five gene data set (chloroplast rbcL, atpB,matK, and nuclear 18S and 26S nrDNA) obtained from GenBank, and conversion to absolute time using three fossil reference time points
• the divergence of the Ampelocissus-Vitis clade in the Tiffian stage of the Paleocene (62.0-56.8 Ma) based on fossil evidence
• the presence of well preserved Vitis seed at the late Neogene Gray Fossil site in Tennessee (7-4.5 Ma)

The authors used Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis by Sampling Trees (BEAST) and Randomized Accelerated Maximum Likelihood (RAxML) to report the number of unique site patterns. Based on this, they calculated that the average rate of substitution in this data set was 7.2 × 10-8 substitutions per site per million years, and used this information to calibrate the grapevine molecular clock.
The authors summarized their findings in this chronogram that shows divergence on the y-axis and geologic time line on the x-axis.¹

I used this diagram to understand the timing related to the grapevine's North American continental origin, dispersal and diversification.²

• The phylogenetic relationships and network of grapevines reflect the Northern hemisphere Cenozoic history.
• Fossil distributions suggest that, by the end of the Neogene the genus Vitis was widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere.
• Fossils of Vitaceae have been found frequently in Western North American Eocene deposits dating from 55.8 to 33.9 Ma.
• This fossil history coupled with the DNA analysis suggest an increasing fragmentation, isolation, and differentiation beginning in North America and extending to Asia and Europe.

This origin of grapevines in North America and it's spread to Europe and Asia can be reconciled by looking at the map of Laurasia.³ During the Paleocene, the supercontinent Laurasia had only begun dividing into North America and Eurasia and the climate was much warmer. North American origin of Ampelopsis (Vitaceae), the ancestral grapevine lead to diversification in the mid-Oligocene. The rise of Vitis in the early Miocene was followed by the separation of North American and Asian land masses, In the late Miocene, this geographical separation lead to the fragmentation and speciation during the Pliocene and Pleistocene cooling cycles.
I was under the impression that the origins of the grapevine was in the Transcaucasia region, but I now know that this is related to Vitis vinifera. I now know that the ancient ancestors of that small branch of Vitis originated in North America when it was part of a supercontinent called Laurasia!
Finis!

References:
1. Yizhen Wan, Heidi R Schwaninger, Angela M Baldo, Joanne A Labate, Gan-Yuan Zhong, and Charles J Simon, A phylogenetic analysis of the grape genus (Vitis L.) reveals broad reticulation and concurrent diversification during neogene and quaternary climate change, BMC Evolutionary Biology 2013, 13:141.
2. SlideShare.
3. Wikipedia, Laurasia
3. Scitable, The Molecular Clock and Estimating Species Divergence.
4.Evolutionary genomics of grape (Vitis vinifera ssp. vinifera) domestication