Our first harvest

A few more red grapes.

This is for the white crop.

Well, we aren't going to be making wine just yet, nor is there enough for a jar of jam. But tasting these delicious tiny morsels that explode with flavour has been fun. We decided to pick today because we are expecting Hurricane Ophelia to hit on Monday. It might even cause a stock market crash according to an article in Forbes. Another article in Forbes today describes how rare it is for hurricanes to come up our way. We figured it was time to get ready, especially since another system would be affecting us in the days leading up to Ophelia.

Lesson 1. Harvest requires daily attention to catch the grapes at their prime. We missed it and ended up with some raisins, some eaten by birds, and a few choice mini grapes. The red Rondo grapes are very dark skinned and have a strong burgundy-type flavour, with blackberry overtones. The few white grapes had a distinct flavour of a Riesling. There were quite a few flower heads that had not been pollinated amongst the white vines. As grapes are hermaphroditic (have both male and female parts on them), I wonder what held them back. Anyway, we weren't too worried about the crop this year as we didn't even expect one yet and certainly would not have gotten enough for winemaking.

The vines are amazingly robust, and the red vines get beautiful leaf colour in the Fall. We'll have plenty of woody stem to train up into the trellises. Alex has already designed them based on what we currently have and what we are planning for the future. Although the Rondo did well, he wants to try Pinot Noir next. And that makes sense as it is reported to have a similar pattern of cooler weather and short season performance as chardonnay.

Our next task will be to clean up the area, dig up the biggest weeds, cut back the vines after selecting the two strongest in each plant, and work on the next year's progress. So far so good. The vines did much better than the corn. Didn't think silver queen would like it here.

Red vines producing nice fall colour.  

White vines flourishing

And we also picked the corn.