Summer Heat Wave

July is at its end and the conditions in the vineyard are dryer then I ever recall. Most of the varieties at the bottom of the vineyard look quite stressed and vines throughout have started to drop the fruit. There has been a lot of irrigation this past week, so lets hope that they recover for the fruit that remains. At least from a visible perspective, the Blattner varieties seem to be handling the drought the best with minimal fruit loss or signs of stress. In addition Mad Angie and Mad Sylvaner look very healthy this year.

At this point all the fruit from Regent, Baco Noir, Zweigelt and Auxerrois have been impacted, although Zweigelt and Auxerrois did not have much this year anyway.

Leon Millot, Pinot Noir, L'Acadia Blanc,  Chardonnay, Osceola Muscat and Seigerebbe are about 10-20% impacted.

Shrivelled berries on Osceola Muscat

Asides from the drought condition, the vines look good and none show any signs of powdery mildew, black rot or other diseases. This is really good, as usually at this time we have some. I think this is a direct relation to the vine maintenance that is been ongoing this year. Kudos to all  the volunteers doing their bit to maintain the vines.

Irrigation will continue and hopefully reduce any further stress issues. check back for updates later in the summer,

Bloom is slowly happening

June is nearly over and the long awaited sunshine and heat has arrived. We are still a bit behind last year, but closing the gab a bit. As you recall we had a very early spring in 2016, then it kind of went into the tank for a bit. By the end of June 2016 all the vines were into bloom and some had moved into fruit set.

For this year only a handful have started to bloom and there is nothing close to fruit set yet. As of June 25:

Whites:

Siegerrebbe, Chardonnay, Madeleine Sylvaner and Angevine, Auxerrois:
None have shown and bloom yet.

L'Acadia Blanc, Osceolo Muscat,  Petite Milo, Epicure and 48-05-49: 
All of these are into bloom. The Osceolo and Petite are the furthest along.

An example of bloom

Reds

Zweigelt, Pinot Noir, Regent, 48-0-83, Baco Noir,
none have shown any bloom yet. The Zweigelt has suffered quite a bit from the winter and is quite a bit behind other varieties.

Labelle, Leon Millot:
These two are into Bloom.

As always, comments and feedback is encouraged.  Hopefully we get some sustained sunshine and heat and get our fruit on!

Spring 2017 Update

I am a bit late in getting this post out, so it will be a summary of the data over the past few weeks.

We are well behind last year at this point. In 2016 all our vines had shoots by late April. this year, we still have vines in the bud swell stage as of May 22.  Hopefully our weather is on the upswing and we see some prolonged sunshine.

I have misplaced the May 16 data, but I think the data from the dates below gives us a clear picture on where things are at.


Whites (May 2, 2017):

Osceolo Muscat, Petite Milo, L'Acadia Blanc:  Bud swell 

Auxerrois, Madeleine Sylvaner; , 48-05-49, Chardonnay,  Siegerrebe, Madeleine Angevine, Epicure: were ranging from bud to early bud swell.

Whites (May 22, 2017):

Osceolo Muscat, Petite Milo, L'Acadia Blanc, Auxerrois, Madeleine Sylvaner; , 48-05-49, Chardonnay,  Siegerrebe, Madeleine Angevine, Epicure: All varieties had achieved bud burst and had shoots ranging from 1 cm to 4 cm. 




Reds (May 2, 2017):

Baco Noir, Leon Millot:  These were at the advanced bud swell stage and very close to shoots.

Regent, 48-05-83, Pinot Noir, Zweigelt, LaBelle, Regent:  these were all only at the early bud stage  



Reds (May 22, 2017)

Baco Noir, Leon Millot, Regent, LaBelle, Pinot Noir: All varieties had achieved bud burst and had shoots ranging from 1 cm to 3 cm. 

48-05-83,  Zweigelt:   These 2 are struggling and still at advanced bus stage. 48.05.83 has may 5% at burst. Last year Zweigelt was one of our earlier vines, so it obviously does not like these cool springs.

Climate Data 2016

This Blog post is a bit later than normal, but it took us a bit of time to get all the units collected and then took me more time to get them all downloaded and the information compiled. Better late then never!

2016 marks the end of our 5 year climate study and as in 2015 a few experienced some problems downloading.  Out of the 38 units we installed, 13 experienced some type of problem and we could not get any data from them. Unfortunately many of the damaged units came from the Fauquier/Needles region so no data for this region was available for 2016.

Looking at our frost free days, we do see an increase again this year. In many locations, there had not been a fall frost occurrence until well into November.

For our purposes we used “slight” frost as our parameter, using 0°C for our last spring frost and -2°C for our first fall frost.  

Frost Free Days (FFD)

Region	2014	2015	2016
Nakusp	191	192	195
Arrow Park	175	192	201
Burton	177	187	210
Needles/Fauquier	171	182	*Data from this area was corrupt and FFD were not available.

We expected that our 2015 was a warmer year, and for the most part it was.  We had more FFD and most areas showed an increase in GDD. 

Growing Degree Days (GDD) is a measure of heat accumulation used to predict plant development rates such as the date that a crop will reach maturity. GDD is calculated by taking the average of the daily maximum and minimum temperatures minus a base temperature, (in our case 10 °C).  The yearly GDD is cumulative throughout the growing season (April 1 to October 31).

Growing Degree Days (GDD)

Region	2014	2015	2016
Nakusp	1033	1011	1062
Arrow Park	997	1057	1020
Burton	1077	1116	1082
Needles/Fauquier	1060	1099	Data from this area was corrupt and GDD were not available.

September Brix Readings - Part 2

The Birds are coming! Pretty much every row we did not net became food for the Birds - they are very efficient pickers too. Luckily they did leave enough fruit to allow me to do more Brix readings. Brix were measured by testing 3 to 4 grapes at various locations on each row. So as of September 19:


WHITES

Siegerrebbe: 20.5 

Muscat harvested  Sept. 24 at 20.5 Brix

L'Acadia Blanc: 21.5

Osceolo Muscat: 19.5

Epicure: 19

Petit Milo: 21

48-05-49: 20.5

Leon Millot harvested Sept. 24 at 21.5 Brix

RED

48-05-83: 17.5

Labelle: 21

Baco Noir: 16

Zweigelt: 20

Leon Millot: 20.5

Pinot Noir:17.5

Regent: 18




Let the wine making begin! A few members selected varieties to make wine from and harvest on L'Acadia Blanc (46lbs), Petiti Milot (34lbs), Leon Millot (108 lbs, with a bit of Pinot Noir) and Osceolo Muscat (125 lbs) was done on Sept. 24. 

48-05-83 and Baco Noir are also slated for the carboy, but they need a bit more time on the vine to ripen up still.

Pretty low yield on the L'Acadia as the bunches were very loose and not very populated. This is likely from poor weather in late spring during bloom. Hopefully it will improve next year. The yield on the Petit Milo was very good, but as it was not netted, there was not much fruit left by the time it was harvested. The two types were mixed into one batch of wine and with final Brix of 23 it should make a very nice wine.

September Brix readings

As of September 4 most of the hanging fruit is looking nice.  Varieties that members are hoping to make wine from have al been covered with bird and insect netting. good job all! 

A quick walk through with the refractometer provided the following sugar content numbers.  Brix were measured by testing 3 to 4 grapes at various locations on each row. 2015 measurements were gathered on September 7 and are shown in brackets. A few are progressing very nicely. but we will need a pretty good September to get the other numbers up. 

WHITES

Siegerrebbe at 19 Brix

Siegerrebbe: 19 (2015 17 brix)

L'Acadia Blanc: 18 (2015 15 brix)

Chardonnay: fruit removed due to powdery mildew

Osceolo Muscat: 18 (2015 19 brix)

Auxerrois: fruit removed due to powdery mildew

Madeliene fruit removed due to powdery mildew

Madeliene fruit removed due to powdery mildew

Netting on L'Acadia Blanc

Epicure: 15.5 (2015 19 brix)

Petit Milo: 19.5 (2015 21 brix)

48-05-49: 16 (2015 19 brix)

Leon Millot at 19 Brix

RED

48-05-83: 15.5 (2015 19 brix)

Drape netting on Leon Millot

Labelle: 16 (2015 18 brix)

Baco Noir: 15 (2015 20 brix)

Zweigelt: 16.5 (2015 20 brix)

Leon Millot: 19 (2015 20 brix)

Pinot Noir:17 (2015 17 brix)

Regent: 15 (2015 14 brix)

Summer Update - Reds

As mentioned in the previous blog, an update on the Red status is below. The data for this post is from August 14 2016 so I am a bit slow in posting. I will do an update soon with some Brix numbers now that we are into September.

Blattner

48-05-83: small-med berries in fairly loose bunches.  No signs of powdery mildew (PM) or other issues. Veraison is present on most vines (about 70%)

Labelle: Small berries in loose bunches.  About 80% of the fruit is showing veraison.  The vines look good, no signs of PM and not overly vigorous.

Cab Libra: This was an under performing vine that was removed in the Spring of 2016.

Remaining Varieties

Baco Noir: small-medium berries in loose bunches.   It still struggles a bit with low vigor. No PM visible and vines look healthy. About 80% of the fruit is showing veraison.

Zweigelt

Zweigelt: medium sized berries in tight(ish) bunches.  About 60% have achieved veraison.  Overall vines look healthy but low vigour. No PM visible, but many leaves have turned bright red. 

Leon Millot: Small berries and semi-tight bunches.  100% have achieved veraison.  Note this was achieved by August 7.

Leon Millot

Pinot Noir: Small berries in tight bunches.  No PM visible and vines look healthy. About 50% are showing veraison.

Regent: Small-medium berries in loose bunches. No PM visible and vines look healthy. About 50% are showing veraison.

Baltica: This was an under performing vine that was removed in the Spring of 2016.

Marquette: This was an under performing vine that was removed in the Spring of 2016.