Vineyard D.I.Y.

Starting your own vineyard: What a year!

This has been a really challenging year for grapes in Northeast Pennsylvania. Wine grapes don't like a lot of rain. Harvest time is supposed to be exciting, but we are having a hard time mustering enthusiasm since so much has gone wrong this year. It all started in May, with the bud-destroying late frost.  It pretty much decimated the Cabernet Franc for the year. We probably don't have enough grapes to make even one bottle.

The white Traminette pictured above haven't fared as badly. They actually look pretty professional this year. We are just wondering if they will actually ripen by harvest time since the frost delayed their growth by a good one to two weeks, which is a lifetime for a grape.

How can you tell if a grape is truly ripe? I'm glad you asked, because it gives me a chance to talk about one of the coolest pieces of equipment used in wine making: the refractometer. Basically, the refractometer measures the amount of sugar in your grape juice by detecting the degree to which light is refracted when passing through the juice. Hence the name. Who invents this stuff?

We have a hand-held refractometer that measures something called Brix, which is the measure of how much sugar is in your grape juice. Distilled water has a Brix of 1.00. Ripe Traminette should have a Brix of about 23. And that is precisely what we are worried about this year. Will we achieve Brix 23 before the first frost. Stay tuned!

 

Starting your own vineyard: The trellis conundrum

This picture is from the spring of 2003 when we had just planted the vines.  A trellis post is in the foreground and there is another at the end of the row. In between, stakes support the baby vines. As you can see, there are no trellis wires yet.  The vines won't grow high enough to need trellising until the second year.

In the fall of 2002, we were getting ready for the arrival of our baby vines in the spring of '03.  We had placed the trellis posts at either end of the rows and then waded into researching the bewildering topic of trellising.  As usual, we turned to From Vines to Wines: The Complete Guide to Growing Grapes and Making Your Own Wine.  This book by Jeff Cox had become our bible.  Although he walks you through trellis systems such as Four-arm Kniffen, Movable Wire and Geneva Double Curtain in an organized, methodical manner, we were overwhelmed with information. 

Since we recently decided that we would try to grow the vines as organically as was possible in our climate, we had invested in another great book: The Grape Grower: A Guide to Organic Viticulture  The author, Lon Rombough, recommended a simple two-wire system. Basically, two end posts with one wire about five feet off the ground and the second wire fifteen inches above that. 

We then went back to Jeff Cox's book to see what he had to say about the two-wire system.  We discovered that a two-wire trellis system is the most common type used in the United States and is the most effective for all grape varieties.

So that's what we decided to use.  In reality, we didn't need anything other than the end posts for at least another year when the new vines would actually grow tall enough to reach the trellis wire. Looking back at our records, I found we planted the vines in the spring of 2003 but did not actually buy the trellis wire until March of 2004. 

Starting your own vineyard: You know who your friends are

You know you have a really good friend when you propose that they spend a crisp autumn day with you on the other side of a two-man auger...and they actually show up to do it. 

In the fall of 2002, we were preparing for the arrival and planting of our baby vines the following spring which meant we needed to get a fence around the vineyard and trellis posts in place.  My husband-to-be called his friends John and Tom for help. We figured we needed to augur holes for four corner fence posts and ten trellis posts, one at each end of a row. 

I don't know if you've ever seen a two man auger but it is basically a solid steel corkscrew as big as a man with a motor attached and two inadequate handles.  You can see it in the picture between the guy with the red and white shirt and the guy with the white shirt.  You start it like a push mower and this insanely heavy blade begins revolving rather briskly while those roped into using it gamely try to hang on and maneuver it in a downward motion with their arms held awkwardly at right angles to the body. When you are digging a deep enough hole, the operators actually end up kneeling on either side of this machine as it spins in the earth hitting rocks and tearing apart back muscles.  To this day, I don't think my husband can comfortably lower his arms to his sides. 

He has incredible friends who actually remained enthusiastic about the vineyard after that day.

Starting your own vineyard: Be prepared to change direction

Our Traminette vines, growing while no one is watching, growing as though they'd never been hurt before

We were up at the vineyard this weekend and had to face the fact that five of our mature Cabernet Franc vines are dead. The late frost on May 21st did them in. Their trunks were practically split down the middle. They were six years old! It's like losing a pet, or five pets. They certainly take almost as much maintenance. 

The white Traminette are perfectly fine. Growing vigorously as usual. It really is evident that the hybrid vines bred for harsher climates have fared much better than the red Vinifera Cabernet Franc. It will be interesting to see if the Traminette ripen before the first fall frost. The latest newsflash from our Wine Grape Agent pointed out that the chronic summer monsoons will encourage excessive vegetative growth, distracting the vine from ripening the grapes.  

We coped with the loss of our vines by throwing ourselves into research. We wanted to see if there was a French-American hypbrid variety that approximated the taste of Cabernet Sauvignon but was hardy in our Northeast Pennsylvania climate. We hit upon Baco Noir, a cross between a Vitus Vinifera variety named Folle Blanche and a native American grape. It is apparently used as a Cabernet Sauvignon substitute in Northern climates. We'll see....

In stark contrast to the Traminette picture, here is a recent picture of our poor, spindly Cabernet Franc that will not bear fruit this year

How to start your own vineyard: Soil preparation

Our Traminette vines about a week ago. 

We were very busy in the fall of 2002 getting our new vineyard ready to receive the vines in the spring of 2003.  We had recently plowed the area we were going to plant and then dug the trenches for the vines.  Now, according to our faithful, From Vines to Wines: The Complete Guide to Growing Grapes and Making Your Own Wine, it was time to get the soil ready.  The book had a lot of good information about soil preparation and the effect it has on the growth of vines, but we had no idea where to have the soil analyzed.

Once again, I turned to our Wine Grape Agent at the Penn State University Cooperative Extension.   He recommended   A & L Analytical Labs in Memphis. They could analyze the soil but we should then turn over the lab report to someone who could interpret the results and recommend how to amend the soil for optimal vine health.  For this we turned to Dr. Tony Wolf, a professor of Viticulture at Virginia Tech. 

Our initial soil ph was 5.2, pretty acidic.  Under the assumption that we were planting vinifera cultivars, Dr. Wolf recommended that we raise the ph to about 6.5 by applying lime at a rate of 3 tons per acre.  Since our little plot was less than an acre, we reduced accordingly.  He also recommended adding some potassium and magnesium. So adding lime, no problem, but where do you get potassium and magnesium?  I never saw big bags of it at Home Depot.  We were too embarrassed to ask Dr. Wolf such an elemental question, so we searched online.  You have to go to your local farming supply place and get potash and epsom salts.

We made all the amendments in the spring of 2003.  Amazingly, when we did another soil analysis in the summer of 2003, our soil ph was 7!  It really worked!

How to start your own vineyard: It's a lot of digging!

Starting a vineyard involves a lot of repetitive digging, most of which can be done by machine if you plan correctly.  We did not.  The story goes like this:

In the fall of 2002 before the spring planting of our vines, we were reading our bible, From Vines to Wines: The Complete Guide to Growing Grapes and Making Your Own Wine, and were brainwashed into believing that we simply must dig trenches with a backhoe in which to plant our vines. As mentioned in my last post, it is helpful to be well-connected to those with the means to own heavy machinery.  We just happened to have well-to-do friends that had a recreational backhoe.  I'm serious, here's a picture at the vineyard site:

How did we get it from our friend's spread to the vineyard?  Well it came with it's own trailer of course! So we get this thing to the vineyard to dig the trenches.  We were planting five rows of vines, ten vines in each row, six feet apart.  Carry the one...that's five sixty-foot rows to dig.  A fairly easy matter with the backhoe on a brisk late fall day!  It was fun. 

In the meanwhile, we were having the soil tested to see if it needed amending to provide proper nutrients to our baby vines.  We blithely reasoned that we would dig the trenches and leave them open until we got the results back from the soil lab, add the amendments, and fill in the holes. 

WE HAD TO FILL IN FIVE SIXTY-FOOT TRENCHES WITH A SHOVEL! 

If I ever inadvertently cross the North Korean border, I'll skip through the gulag system!
Just remember, don't return the backhoe until you've filled in the trenches.

 

Starting your own vineyard: Start planning in 5th grade

When you decide you want to plant your own vineyard, start planning in 5th grade and pick your friends wisely.  My husband met his friend John when they were 10 or 11 and now many years later he has generously allowed us to plant our vineyard on farmland that has been in his family for generations.  Not only did John supply some fallow farmland to plant in, but he has access to a plow and a backhoe. These are key in vineyard preparation (if you do it right).

There is a cute story in From Vines to Wines: The Complete Guide to Growing Grapes and Making Your Own Wine. It involves Dr. Konstantin Frank, the pioneering Russian immigrant who proved that vinifera could grow in the cold northeastern United States.  Jeff Cox, the author of From Vines to Wines, apparently approached Dr. Frank about buying some of his Pinot Noir vines to plant at home.

                "Do you have your soil prepared?" he snapped.

                "I stammered something to indicate that I hadn't."

                "Go home and get a backhoe. Dig a trench three feet wide and three feet deep and refill it                     with the soil. Let it sit over winter. Then ask me for vines," he said. "Then, maybe."

We took this amusing anecdote very seriously.  John cashed in decades old favors from a neighboring farmer and led a parade of fuming motorists the five miles between farms on an ancient tractor with plowing discs attached.

Me driving the vintage tractor with John explaining its vagaries.  We would end up spending a gorgeous late summer day in 2002 at the site plowing it twice and then harrowing it. 

How to start your own vineyard: More on Spacing

When we were up at the vineyard this weekend, I double-checked the vine spacing and we apparently planted the vines 6 feet apart with rows 10 feet apart. I then went back to our bible,
From Vines to Wines: The Complete Guide to Growing Grapes and Making Your Own Wine, to determine why we did this.  It was very simple.  Jeff Cox, the author, had a table that outlined suggested spacing West of the Rockies and East of the Rockies. According to him, vigorous vines, such as native American varieties, should be planted 8 feet apart with 10 feet between rows. Low to medium vigor should be planted 6 feet apart with 10 feet between rows since they don't need as much room to grow. Since we were going to plant some hybrids and some Vinifera, we chose 6 foot spacings. 

There was one other interesting tidbit. In northern areas like Canada (north of 42 degrees latitude), overall vineyard temperatures were higher if the vines were planted on a slope and the rows are spaced closer than 10 feet.  Seven feet apart is apparently optimal. In northern climates with short growing seasons, it's hard to reach the optimal sugar level needed in the grapes before harvest.  So if you space the vines closer, more sunlight hits the leaves, the vineyard temperature rises, and your grapes ripen(hopefully) before the first frost.

In a previous post, I wrote about the devastating May 20th frost that killed all the buds on the vines.  The local wine grape agent advised vintners in the region to sit tight and they would likely see some secondary buds emerge.  When we went to the vineyard this weekend, we were happy to see that this did happen.  It was curious though that the white variety, Traminette, fared much better than our Cabernet Franc. 

Above is a picture of a row of our white variety, Traminette.  Traminette is a French-American hybrid cross between Gewurztraminer and Joannes Seyve.  The resulting variety, Traminette, has the taste of Gewurztraminer coupled with superior disease resistance and cold hardiness.  Obviously, it's breeding brought this vine through a hard frost with a respectable amount of secondary buds and a decent chance at some kind of harvest. 

On the other hand, this is a heart-breaking picture of a Cabernet Franc vine annihilated by the late spring frost. This proves that Vinifera vines are much more tender than the hybrids. Looks like we won't have much red wine this year. 

 

How to start your own vineyard: Spacing the vines

So once we found out that our vine supplier of choice gave a significant volume discount at 50 vines or more -- boom--done--the decision to plant 50 vines was made.

We then entered the endless debate about vine spacing. How far apart should the vines be planted in the rows and how far apart should the rows be? For me, who blithely ignores Burpee's spacing recommendations each spring when stuffing seeds into the ground in a more or less straight row, it was an apocalyptic realization that there are solid hours of passionate horticultural research behind "sow 6-8 inches apart." So much goes into the decision:  how vigorous are the vines you are planting, climate, slope of the land, precipitation.  All these factors create a dizzying matrix of spacing recommendations.

As expected, the French and the Americans are on opposite sides of the vine spacing spectrum.  The French cram their vines together, contending that a vine competing for water and nutrients produces better grapes as a result of its struggle.  The yield per vine may be lower, but yield per acre is maximized.  Americans say that close spacing has no effect on quality.  A vine with adequate spacing will produce more grapes of perfectly good quality and therefore maximize yield per acre. 

Now that I'm re-reading all this stuff about spacing, I realize, I don't remember how we spaced the vines!  According to our bibles, they sort of boiled it down to a standard spacing range of  6 to 8 feet between vines and 8 to 10 feet between rows.  I think we may have thrown a dart somewhere in the middle of the matrix to make our decision after realizing the vine spacing debate was an endless loop.  When I go up to the vineyard again, I'll measure and get back to you!  It seems to have worked if the healthy vines in the picture are any measure.

Starting your own vineyard: It's not all wine and roses

Cabernet Franc ripening in the summer of 2008

I posted the above picture because we're trying to focus on happier times.  We went up to the vineyard this weekend for the first and very important fungicide spray of the year and found that almost all the new shoots had been badly burned by the frost we had on May 20th. "So what does this mean?" everyone asked when we went back to the lake for the Memorial Day festivities. We were not really sure as we had never experienced such a severe, late frost since planting the vineyard in 2003. We assumed that some secondary buds would bloom later, but that the vineyard was severely compromised for this year and we could look forward to a reduced harvest if the later blooms had time to ripen.  It was a glum day. 

When we got home to the laptop, sure enough there was a bulletin from our friendly  Wine Grape Agent.  He said that a lot of northern vineyards had been hit by frost.  He wrote "If you did have frost damage, hang tight and see what pops out, either secondaries or laterals, but start adjusting to a new reality for the season - reduced crop and possibly a delayed harvest.  Do not stop your disease/pest control program.  Perhaps active frost prevention measures should be considered for the future."  Pretty much what we expected. 

As recreational growers, this is a serious bummer, but if you are doing this for a living, talk me down from the ledge, this is just plain serious. 

What on earth do "real" vineyards do for frost control?  A friend of ours who grows recreationally had smudge pots going and we decided if this happens again, we will invest in enough burlap or bedsheets to cover 50 vines. At next frost warning, the vineyard will be a kalaidescope of offensive 70's poly/cotton twin sheets that I believe are the root of much Gen X angst.