Harvest day!

 

It was our first dry, sunny day in ages. We were out in the vineyard at 10:30, just after the Dvorskyi left, having removed our flyscreen to accommodate the replacement of the doors later this week. We picked Solaris first until 2:00, stopping for a quick lunch outdoors. We then continued to finish the Solaris and onto the Rondo. We didn't quite finish the Rondo, have 1.5 vines to complete in the morning. It will be drizzling in the morning, but that's okay. 

So what does our harvest look like?  We had a relatively small yield of Solaris given the number of vines and their maturity. There were two issues. The first is missing grapes on many of the bunches, the second is a mild case of Botrytis. Missing grapes on a bunch are often caused by poor pollination due to weather, or a condition called "hens and chicks", where some berries are small and undeveloped. Other reasons include pest infestations, insufficient sunlight, excessive nitrogen fertiliser, improper pruning, and nutrient deficiencies, such as magnesium deficiency. I know we have magnesium deficient soil, so we'll work on correcting that. 

The Botrytis, is a different story. Botrytis, or grey mold, is a fungal disease that affects grapes, causing yield loss and poor quality. It appears as a grey, moldy rot on infected berries and stems, but can also result in "Noble Rot" if the conditions are specific. Noble rot increases the flavour of the grape, and the grapes that were turning brown tasted amazing! It wasn't that serious and we removed some of the worst grapes, but we will see how the wine turns out this year. Our yield was certainly better than last year, with at least two bushels picked.  

The Rondo, unfortunately, was pretty seriously affected by powdery mildew, which took its toll in the last week. We had to pick out a lot of grapes that shrivelled into hard nodules. We will have about a bushel and a half of Rondo. 

Two extraordinary findings were noted: 1) two separate bird nests were spotted in the vines, and 2) the new Rondo vines produced grapes that did not have powdery mildew. We also noted that the kites were definitely protecting the vineyard. Our carefully conducted experiment (BS), in which we bagged some of the Rondo clusters and left some of them unbagged, showed that the unbagged grape clusters were still intact. Ergo, the bags are surplus to requirements from now on, yippee! Too much work. They also produced several bags with slugs, multiple bags with mosquitoes, and multiple bags with flies. Curiously, there were no bees in the vineyard, and the few wasps were on the exposed red grapes, not on the white. Empiric observation. Not valid. 

Standing by the baby Rondo with its grape cluster.

They are perfect

Baby Rondo vine yield in the first year

Solaris 

Alex picking

A bird's nest - there were lots of grapes around it. 

One of the pretty Solaris clusters

Hens and chicks

Another bird nest

Rondo yield, with 1.5 vines still to pick.