Vineyard D.I.Y.

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.