2020 Annual Cycle of Growth

It's that time again to update my annual of cycle of growth form. I summarized the information that I've been keeping since 2015 and provided the form in a blog on September 2019. It is something that I read about in Ed Hellman's online post called Grapevine Structure and Function.
This year, I will add Barbera to the form. This is the first year that we have laid down canes for the Barbera which we planted in 2016.

Since I began keeping data in the form, it seems that the Chardonnay are always the first to bloom. This year, we first saw the Chardonnay blooming on June 20 and by June 22, at least 50% of the flowers were blooming. The Cabernet Franc clone 214 was also around 40-50% bloom on June 22. We noticed that there was a difference between our two Cabernet Franc clones, 214 and 327. Clone 214 is always earlier to bud break than 327 and it is earlier to flower. The Barbera and the Auxerrois were around 20% in bloom and the Chenin Blanc was at more like 10% bloom. The Cabernet Sauvignon was not in bloom at all until June 25. Bloom lasted about a week or so before everything appeared to be at 100% bloom. All of our varieties are now at various stages of berry set.

Variety	Berryset Stage
Auxerrois
Chenin Blanc
Chardonnay
Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Franc
Barbera

2016 La Fontaine Aux Enfants

We had this 2016 La Fontaine Aux Enfrants Marc Kreydenweiss Pinot Blanc with dinner a few nights ago when my husband made grilled chicken and grilled vegetables. After the first sip, I thought that it tasted like the Auxerrois that we make. My husband said, close, it is a Pinot Blanc from Alsace. The aroma to me were of stone fruit, white peaches and pears. There was a good acidity to the wine, which our palates have now become quite accustomed to.
On the second night that we tried this wine we had it with grilled corn, avocado, and tortilla chip salad. This was a wonderful combination. I really liked this recipe which I got from "Vice". It is a perfect summer time recipe because everyone is grilling corn and if you have extra grilled corn, this is the way to use it. This wine pairs very well with summertime grilled food.

My husband pointed out that there is a lot more information about Marc Kreydenweiss on the Internet and sure enough there is. The winery is located in Andlau, in Alsace, between Strasbourg and Colmar, in the area called Piemont des Vosges.
On The Wine Anorak, Jamie Goode wrote that Marc Kreydenweiss has 12 ha of vineyards in Andlau, including parts of three Grand Cru sites in Wiebelsberg, Moenchberg and Kastelberg. The domaine is over three centuries old, and was taken over by Marc in 1971. It has been biodynamically managed since 1989 and the first entirely biodynamic vintage was in 1991.
In 2007, Marc Kreydenweiss' son, Antoine Kreydenweiss took over the management of the vineyard. He is accompanied by his wife Charlotte, their daughters Zoe, Lilou and Leonie, the whole team and his horse. At the Marc Kreydenweiss Site you can watch this video of man and horse weeding a part of the vineyard showing the vertiginous view of the village below.

2020 Planting Day

Hopefully, this is our last planting day to repopulate our vineyard that was devastated in 2014. Originally, we laser planted 6800 vines in 2013 but due to a number of factors, we lost 90% of our vines when the spring of 2014 came around. We reordered our vines in 2014 which meant that replanting would be in 2016 because it takes 18 months for a custom grafted vine to be created.
In the meantime, we put in our lineposts and endposts and trellis wire, all things that should either have been put into the vineyard or installed shortly thereafter when planting tall grafted vines.
In 2016, instead of the 6000 vines that we ordered, we received 4200 vines. We replanted vines in 2016, 2017, (had a break in 2018), 2019 and then the last 200 vines this year. Since there were "only" 200 vines to be replanted, our friends came to help us dig the holes. We couldn't have done this without our friends who helped us all along the way. Three nurseries and 6 years later, we are back up to a full vineyard.
This year, we tried something new with the nursery that we are working with. They created the custom graft in January, calloused over the graft union and we are the "nursery field". The live plants were shipped cross country and arrived on Monday. We opened the container and found 200 beautiful, green live plants.

We took one plant out of the crate and planted it:

Our friends came to help us on Tuesday, June 23, at 9 a.m. It was a cloudy, overcast day for most of the morning which was great for planting. The 200 vines spread over 5 rows were planted by noon!
I created this snapshot to summarize when our vineyard replanting occurred with the various varieties:

We still want to verify exactly how many vines are in each row. We will do that later! In the meantime, we want to thank all of our friends who came to help. Many of them said that it's starting to look like a real vineyard!

The Elusive Stigmatic Fluid

Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I went to check on our Chardonnay, which we know is the first to bloom and sure enough, the Chardonnay had just begun to bloom so we took some pictures. When we went home, I saw something in a few of my photos which gave me pause. It looked like a droplet of water on the top of the stigma on one of the flowers and then I saw it on another flower.
I recalled that I've blogged about this thing called stigmatic fluid in at least two of my posts: Events Post Capfall and in The Perilous Journey to Fruitset. Those blogposts contained these sentences: "Rain can dilute the stigmatic fluid and interfere with germination of the pollen grains" and "the pollen grains adhere to substances secreted on the stigma". I understood from my reading that rain during flowering is a bad thing, but now I have the visual reason why this is so.

At first, I thought that I might have mistaken a drop of dew for stigmatic fluid, so today, my husband and I took more photos in the hopes of photographically capturing this elusive droplet called the stigmatic fluid. Once you know what it looks like, it's not as elusive as I originally thought.

In Nick Dokoozlian's chapter called Grape Berry Growth and Development, which can be found online, he mentions that the stigmatic secretion consists primarily of sugars, proteins, and mineral nutrients essential for the subsequent development of the pollen tube.¹
So what happens if there is rain during flowering? We had that last year and it was not a pretty sight.

Yesterday, our Chardonnay was probably at the beginning stages of flowering and today, it is probably at more than 50% flowering. Fortunately for us, the grape flowers, and the elusive but important stigmatic fluid, we are in for a stretch of days with no rain.
References:
1. Nick K. Dokoozlian, Grape Berry Growth and Development.