Notes from the Vineyard (Contributed by Rob Schultz)
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
We’ve had nearly perfect weather this season so far, and the vines have responded with an amazing amount of vigor. When the flowers opened, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and because of this, the fruit set magnificently. It looks like we’ve got a lot of fruit out there, and the berries are just now beginning to swell. I’m anticipating veraison in mid-August, but it’s a little early to start predicting a harvest date.
If there’s a downside to the great weather, it’s that my crew and I have been working doggedly to keep up with the canopy management, which involves guiding all the growing shoots into the trellis system to protect them from the wind and passing tractors. Each vine needs to be handled at least twice, and with about 162,000 vines out there, it can seem to take a long time. We’ve got a good, hardworking, temporary crew of 22, some of whom have over 30 years experience in the vineyard.
Last week the temperatures rose pretty high, and the vines are beginning to show just a bit of water stress at their growing tips. There’s been a lot of studies that show that vines that are a little thirsty before veraison produce tastier fruit, but tomorrow we’re going to begin irrigating just a bit, just those young vines we planted last year to fill in some gaps and aren’t yet producing fruit. The more established vines have a pretty strong root system and arent’ showing as much stress in any case.
All around the vineyard all the hay was mowed this past weekend, and with the lack of hiding places, we need to be on guard to chase any deer out. We’ve been seeing a lot of hawks lately, and just last week spotted a Great Horned Owl. A great blue heron flies over every afternoon and sometimes stops to look for the big bull frog that croaks all day in the creek. I’ve found signs of coyotes, but haven’t yet seen one.
A lot of vineyard managers I spoke with earlier in the season were reporting a lot of rust mites, a major nuisance in the vineyard, but we’ve got a really good population of ladybugs, predators of the rust mites, and I haven’t seen any mite damage so far.
With this week’s cooler temperatures and a full moon bringing in a higher moisture content in the air, we’re on the lookout for mildew, but I haven’t found any and am confident at this point in the game we’re on top of things.
We should complete our canopy management by the end of the week. Afterwards we’ll be hedging, removing leaves on the morning side of the vines to help with ripening, and keeping up with any weeding that needs to be done.
