Famous Ukrainian Wine?

Never heard of Ukrainian wines? Neither had I until I came upon an article about a Radio Free Europe investigation into how EU firms are sidestepping sanctions put in place against Russia after they invaded Crimea. Bastardo Old Crimea is a label of Inkerman International, making wines since 1961. "Only the best wine materials of Ukrainian and imported origin are used for production of wines. The company fully controls the harvesting, transportation, processing, fermentation and bottling of wines," the website claims. Technically, the company is owned by Ukrainian Valeriy Shamotiy but is headquartered in Sweden. Forbes estimated Shamotiy's assets at nearly $77 million in 2013, placing him among Ukraine's richest people. 

They offer labels for every segment of the market: new wines for young, vintage for older, classic for in between, sparkling, dessert and artisanal, in red, white and rose made of all the great varietals and some unusual ones. Somehow, I don't think they are all grown in Ukraine. But if we can grow grapes in Ireland, the steppes of Ukraine could certainly make some room for vineyards among the fields of grain, poppies and sunflowers.

In 2003 the trademark INKERMAN was registered. In 2011, Inkerman International AB, a  holding company with headquarters in Stockholm, was established.  In 2014, LLC INKERMAN UKRAINE was established as a subsidiary of Inkerman International AB. For almost five years after the EU adopted Crimea sanctions, his companies were all controlled by the same Swedish company. Shamotiy's Inkerman International AB is currently formally owned by three companies based in Cyprus, Finland, and Hong Kong, respectively. Inkerman Vintage Wines Factory Ltd was spun off in October 2019 in a sale to a St Petersburg-based company called Optima JSC. Inkerman International wines are now allegedly bottled in Sevastopol, Crimea for the Russian market and in Nova Kakhovka and Odessa, Ukraine for the Ukrainian market. 

A similar split into Ukrainian and Russian-oriented branches have been launched by other companies avoiding the scrutiny related to sanctions. 

According to Trip Advisor, there are at least six other wineries in Ukraine. And how was Inkerman spelled in Cyrillic before Sweden, or was it? Инкерман? It's certainly not a Ukrainian name. There's plenty of shenanigans and intrigue, but how is the wine? 

Brilliant Sunday

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day, cold but not uncomfortable. We walked the donkeys from our fields down the road to their winter home in the barns at ITB Stud. They were complaining loudly and their feet were wet and cold. But when the time came, they refused to leave the field. They like it here. When Alex called to them, they finally came down the road. They know the way.

I then settled in to do some gardening, putting plants into the greenhouse, pulling weeds, and cutting back dead plants. The vineyard is almost asleep, with most of the leaves having fallen. The leaves are still on the trees in the orchard. I'll be leaving everything as is for now, though I'd like to put some natural fertiliser and mulch around the plants to decompose over the winter. I have comfrey in the garden to cut up and soak. But today started out with frost and has remained frigid. I'll wait for another day when the weather and my melancholy clear up.

Cinsault grapes

At dinner in Cru in Kinsale, Alex spotted a wine he'd never encountered before. It was a South African Tiger Horse Cinsault, labelled as coming from old vines. Cinsault is characterised by vines of 40-65 years in age or more, in vineyards that are not irrigated, resulting in 14% alcohol, berry flavour, and light translucent red colour. It is typically said to be served with escargots or stew. How they arrived at those decisions is beyond me. We liked it with seafood. It was lightly fruity, lightly chilled, and served by the owner of Cru who came by to explain his selection of this wine in person. He wanted to be certain we understood what we ordered and also offered to exchange it for something else if we didn't like it. Our experience at Cru overall was exceptional.

I looked up Cinsault when we returned home and learned that it is a grape that thrives in hot windy weather. Hence, it's often found in places like South Africa and the Rhone Valley. It is also used to make rosés in the Provence region. But apparently, Cinsault is in decline, decreasing in total acreage in vineyards all over the world. Over a ten year period from 2000 to 2010, 14% of Cinsault vines were culled from vineyards worldwide and replaced with vines that are easier to cultivate. As a result, Cinsault wines are available in relatively small quantities. A NYT article I found recommends the wines of De Martino winery. It's available in Ireland so I shall be on a quest.

This is not unlike our adoption of Viognier for white, also an old vine variety that's more fickle to grow. I like that in a wine that I am drinking but not making.

Sonoma fires

Today, our hearts are with the people of California who again are suffering from the effects of wildfires. The Kincaid fire has ravaged at least three wineries, including the historic Soda Rock Winery which has been in place since the 1800s. All that is left is the stone facade of their main building and a steel sculpture of a boar called Lord Snort, a Burning Man artwork. They posted the photo on Facebook as sympathetic messages came from all over the world.

The Jackson Family Winery, Robert Young Estate Winery and Vineyard, Garden Creek Vineyards, The Field Stone Winery and Moville Vineyards reportedly also suffered extensive damage. The Alexander Valley is home to about 5,000 acres of vineyards with 31 wineries and 82 growers. Most vintners completed their grape harvest just last week and were in the critical stages of crush. Wind gusts up to 100 mph were reported but have now calmed somewhat. Firefighters are struggling to contain the fires before strong winds are forecast to return.

A new blaze broke out yesterday near the Getty Centre on the west side of Los Angeles hundreds of kilometres from where crews were fighting the state’s biggest and most destructive fire, the Kincade, north of San Francisco. Nearly 200,000 were evacuated and power was cut to millions to avoid exacerbating the potential for new fires. Some argue the power cuts are making it more difficult to escape and to fight the fires. The power companies are saying they can't survive the liability. What a conundrum. At least no one has died.

PostScript 30-10-19: The National Weather Service issued a new warning today: the Extreme Red Flag Warning, for a high-wind event taking place in much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties through Thursday evening.

This is unprecedented. A massive area has been evacuated and more is under advisory.

Pinot noir vines have grapes!

We certainly didn't expect it, didn't even bother looking, but the Pinot noir vines we planted this year have grape clusters. Oh my, what an encouraging development! And some are ripe and exceedingly tasty.

Meanwhile, the Rondo vines are continuing to produce new grapes after the first batch was devoured by our greedy birds. We'll see if they have time to ripen. I doubt it, especially if the predictions for snow on Friday come true.

Finally, we got word today from Galicia that the yield has been low this year:

"Here harvest has finished with a volume shortage this year, around 25% less juice as the grapes were dehydrated due to the very high temperatures just before harvest. So we will have a lot less albariño this year, although the quality is very good."

As Alex concluded, "It's happening."

Vineyard haiku

It rained all day yesterday. So I wrote a vineyard haiku.

The vines are drooping

From massive onslaught of rain

Battering their spines

Hmmmm. Maybe it's the start of a climate change collection.

Climate Change Experimentation

Trellises and companion crops in Galicia

Another article in the New York Times covers how the desert of Isreal is being used to test how the grapes of today will react to the climate of tomorrow. That's actually pretty smart. And, once again, they are adopting techniques we have already implemented like using trellises and ventilation.

What they won't learn, however, is how the extremes of climate will affect the grape output and production of wine. For that you need climate variability. And we certainly are getting a lot of that here. Today, soaking warm rain all day. Friday, the possibility of snow.

And it's not just vintners that are adjusting. Everyone in agriculture is scrambling to find answers. Fruit and nut farmers are having the toughest time as it takes so long to get to mature status for trees.

Netting to shade grapes

The NYT examines climate change’s impact on wine

In the last line of part one in the 4-part series on the effects of climate change on viticulture, New York Times columnist Eric Azimov concludes,

"Viticulture by its nature is complicated. As the world’s climates are transformed, it is only becoming more so."

Curiously, he recounts the thinking of wine grape growers around the world and it sounds eerily familiar. Everything I've been writing about for the past 5 years is in there. The vines I've chosen, the location, the experimentation with different varietals, the soil effects, the thinking behind the decisions, and so on are all in there. Reading it made me feel like a scientist again. Reading it also made me think that I'm a mad scientist: smart enough to know how to try and crazy enough to try when everything is getting increasingly unpredictable. What have we done?  Are we going to drive ourselves insane?

I can't wait to read the next instalment.

Here's what the promotional statement about the series said:

"Around the world, smart wine producers are working on ways to keep their vineyards flourishing despite hotter summers, warmer winters, droughts and the sometimes violent expressions of climate change, like freak hailstorms, spring frosts, flooding and wildfires.

In the first of a four-part series, The Times’s wine critic, Eric Asimov, teases out the major themes: new technologies, experiments with different grapes, a shifting map for viticulture, higher-altitude vineyards and planting to limit rather than maximize exposure to sunlight."

Post-Lorenzo

Well, we got off lucky. The vineyard suffered little damage, just some broken branches, from extra-tropical cyclone Lorenzo.  The orchard did okay, too, with just a few pears on the ground. The donkeys were not seen during the hurricane at all and we suspect they were hiding in their hollow on the north side. The winds were howling from the SE and then SW all day and all night, but the worst we got was 65 knots (120 km/hr). No damage that we could see to house or land, and our friend's boat was undamaged on our mooring.

Mace Head, at the northern corner of Galway Bay had a little less and our boat did fine in Kilrush up the Shannon River. So all in all, not too bad for the strongest hurricane (Category 5 at one stage) to come as far north and east in history. 

The donkeys have since all been accounted for. All nine came down to say Hi yesterday.

🔴 Mace head in the last hour had a gust of 108km/h and also had an average mean wind speed (10mins) of 87km/h. 🔴

🔺 The 87km/h mean speed would be under Red Warning Criteria. 🔺

Met Eireann's Red Warning Criteria;

Mean Speeds in excess of 80 km/h
Gusts Speeds in excess of 130 km/h

Obviously there was no Red Warning but just shows there may be no wind in some parts of the country but others can be much worse!

Highest Wind gust at Weather Alerts Ireland HQ was 51km/h yesterday.

Grape expectations

If you recall last year, we decided on the 14th of September that the grapes needed one more day to sweeten. On the 15th they were gone. We assumed the birds had taken them. We vowed to protect them the following year. 

So this year, we set a calendar alert to remind us to be vigilant around the 14th of September. Alex bought a kite that looks like a raptor which is supposed to chase birds away. Except he tested it in the vegetable garden and it flew rather erratically in our erratic climate conditions. He gave up. 

On the 13th, we determined the grapes were not yet ready. On the 14th, we had torrential rain all day. A friend stopped by and Alex took him up to the vineyard in the rain to admire the vines and the grapes. It was about 1 pm and the grapes were impressive. It was too wet to harvest so we decided to wait one more day. There was no evidence of birds in the vineyard and the cats were making themselves quite visible there.  

On the 15th, a beautiful sunny morning, I took my basket and sheers and went to harvest the grapes. You guessed it, they were gone. All the ripe grapes were gone. A few unripe ones were left behind. I couldn't believe it. All gone. I chided the three cats who accompanied me to the vineyard for sleeping on the job. I found one the culprits missed and tasted it. It was juicy and sweet but small. We would have had to photograph our harvest in a very small basket to make it look more substantial. But now all we have are the empty stalks. 

Next year, a scarecrow, netting, and 24-hour watch schedule. They're not getting in the way of our grape expectations again!

Post-Hurricane Grapedom

Dorian came and went dropping lots of rains but sparing us the winds that the Bahamas and North America experienced. We had little damage, only some overturned and displaced items around the yard.

The grapes have gotten bigger as a result of the rain, and they are turning red quickly now, but are still not sweet enough. There are no white grapes on the Solaris vines that I could find, only red grapes on the Rondo vines. This is completely contrary to last year. Harvest in about a week.

We won't have enough to attempt wine but it's still fun to watch over them and ponder 'What if?'

Hurricanes

Hurricane Dorian devastated the Abacos and Grand Bahama when he stalled there for almost 2 days as a category 5 storm just over a week ago, then skirted the coast of the states before making landfall again in Nova Scotia as a category 2. Now he's made it across the Atlantic. Thankfully, he's no longer a hurricane but he's still packing a lot of water.

We're expecting two extratropical storms, Dorian and Gabrielle, this week, and the effects have already begun. Light rain and wind expected this afternoon with heavy rain overnight and again on Thursday. What will this do to grapes that are ripening about a week before harvest?

I hope the donkeys don't get swept away.

Veraison: grapes turning red!

The Rondo grapes are turning red

One of the most important moments in a grapevine’s annual lifecycle is the onset of ripening of its fruit. In viticulture, the grapes actually visually signal that onset of ripening in a transition called veraison (“verr-ray-zun”). It's when red varietal grapes turn from green to red and begin to sweeten naturally. The term was originally French but has been adopted into English use. The official definition of veraison is a change of colour of grape berries. Veraison also occurs in white grapes but without changing colour – white grapes simply become more translucent.

Veraison typically begins at the end of July in the northern hemisphere. It didn't begin here until the end of August. But we didn't have such great weather this summer. 

During veraison, chemical changes take place inside the grapes. The green chlorophyll is replaced by carotenoids in white grapes turning them more golden or purplish anthocyanins in red grapes. They become filled with glucose, fructose and aromatics. 

The acidity decreases while sweetness increases until they reach the perfect balance for harvesting. The veraison period also signals to viticulturists when to trim their vines, prepare for pests and birds, and keep an eye on the clusters, as some can change colour unevenly, like ours are doing now.

As it appears that year 5 is not the bumper year we were hoping for, we will watch and learn and set our sights on year 6, when the experts say the really good things begin to happen. Only the Rondo vines produced grapes this year. There are few if any grapes set on the white Solaris grapevines. A bit disappointing after the nice performance last year. 

They are ripening unevenly

The vineyard is looking vinyardy.

3-yo Chardonnay vines are looking good

1-yo Pinot noir

1-yo Albarino all alive and well

Two weeks and what a difference

Rondo grapes

In the last two weeks*, we've had an unusual pattern of weather when a low centred itself over Ireland, specifically over Dingle, and vacillated back and forth over the island creating heavy rains and strong winds North and South, and a changeable pattern over us. We went from rain showers to sunshine several times a day, and the grapes responded. They've started to swell and the vines have started to grow.

Tomorrow I will stake myself in the vineyard with my secateurs and start trimming away the leaves obscuring the bunches and the stray shoots whilst securing the main shoots to the overhead trellises. We do love the trellises, walking under them and gazing up into the sunlit leaves and grapes. For some reason, the red vines are more productive than the white vines. But there is still time and hope.

The arbour

More Rondo

Solaris grapes

*This was supposed to be published two weeks ago but I forgot to press Publish after saving.

No joy

We were away for several weeks during a period when we hoped there would be little vineyard work required. When we came home, we thought we'd see major progress. But disappointment came quickly. Not only did the vines not grow as much as everything else, especially the very robust weeds, but the grapes were also underdeveloped for the time of the season. The grapes we had seen in Spain more than a month ago were far more robust than ours were now. The flowers had set and there were grape buds, but I certainly wouldn't call them grapes.

The weather while we were gone was a healthy mix of rain and sun, so we were quite hopeful. The data from Met Eireann shows the same pattern as last year for July.  But it doesn't look like we'll get anything like a substantial harvest by mid-September. Perhaps there was not enough rain. Perhaps not enough heat. Perhaps the vines will produce for future generations. Who knows?

https://www.met.ie/climate/available-data/monthly-data

Wine tasting in Galicia

Carolina and Maria arranged for us to taste some wines that Paco & Lola produces that we might not have experienced yet. We started with the Follas Novas which predates the Paco & Lola brand. It's the wine that the growers are fond of and true to. It had an interesting zing to it. The Paco & Lola is smoother, less acidic. But it has a really interesting hint of nuttiness on my palate.

Visiting Vineyards in Galicia

Diego, Carolina, Maria, and Alex 

We had a fabulous day visiting vineyards that belong to the cooperative of Paco & Lola. Diego is the man in charge of Viticultura for the coop. He visits all the vineyards, manages the disease and pest control, decides when to harvest, and maintains relationships with all the growers. What a delightful and knowledgeable man. He loved that someone was interested in the vines and not just the wines.

Paco & Lola - a truly inspiring coop

We took the opportunity while sailing in Galicia to visit the Paco & Lola vineyards and winery which is only about 6 km from Sanxenxo which has a big marina. We tied Aleria up the night before, had a lovely meal in town with a delicious house Albariño wine, mussels, langoustines and oyster mushrooms fried in a light batter. We had an entertaining young waiter trying out his English to boot. Overall fun.

Vineyard pals

Vineyard cats: Mini on the right and Cinquo, the white splotch on the left.
Itsy invisible dozing in deep grass.

It was a beautiful day yesterday so I took some time to tie up the 2-y-o vines to the poles Alex erected and to pull and tramp down the grass around the vines. We lost 4 Solaris vines, two to the power scythe and two to unknown causes. We're not going to worry about them. I was supervised in my duties by three vineyard cats and nine donkeys in the field next door. Cinquo, Mini and Itsy have taken up residence in the sheltered vineyard grounds, and the Inishturkbeg rescue donkeys are grazing our fields for the summer.

Flowering has begun

Flower clusters on Rondo vines

Well, May was a strange month. Much cooler than normal. Only 11.7°C degrees mean air temperature compared with the three prior years being about 13°C. And whereas it started out dryer, it ended wetter at 112.5 mm compared with 60-70 mm in the last three years. These values are reported for Newport, only 7 miles away and on the water much like we are.  

UK getting warmer and wetter

This chart presents a comparison of annual averages for key meteorological
 indicators in the United Kingdom from 1961 to 2017. 

Statista has created an effective infographic to illustrate the findings of a new report showing what effect climate change has already exerted on UK weather. They wrote,

Irrigation of vineyards

Being just a tad paranoid about this prolonged lack of rain (although we had small amounts overnight the last few nights), I did a little research. I unearthed (pun intended) a study in Galicia that investigated if there was a benefit to irrigation of Albariño vines. Their conclusion: no economic benefit and some detriment to the product.

"As a consequence, gross incomes were not significantly increased by irrigation. The results obtained in this study provide useful information for saving water in agriculture, suggesting that irrigation is not a viable agricultural practice under the conditions of this trial."

https://oeno-one.eu/article/view/63

Equipment has arrived

We have a decent supply of equipment for home brewing and winemaking available right here in the west of Ireland in Galway. The order I placed arrived in two days. Amazing.

It's starting to look like a vineyard

Pergola completed, Alex took to cutting the grass. We've had trouble with the petrol-powered scythe; it would start fine and then cut out. The carburettor was clean, but it was obviously a fuel supply issue elsewhere. So the local fix-it guy suggested a new carburettor which Alex ordered from somewhere far away. Meanwhile, he noticed that the fuel line had a small filter. So he replaced it. Presto bingo it's working fine. So we'll have a spare carburettor when that arrives. Now, just a few more rows to mow and I can clear around the vines.