Update on vineyard progress

 

Rondo with florets

Everything is so late this year. The Rondo has flower buds but none of the others do yet. The Albarino has suffered greatly over this winter. None of the vines are happy and quite a few look dead. I think the late cold snap did them in. 

May was cold and wet in Ireland according to Met Eireann's May Report. All rainfall totals were above their Long-Term Average (LTA) for the month. All mean air temperatures across the country were below their Long-Term Average for the month. Most long-standing stations had their coldest May since at least 1996. This is counterintuitive as all available sunshine totals were above their Long-Term Average (LTA). Who knows?

Overall Spring 2021 was relatively dry, sunny and cool, with a cool and sunny but dry March and April, and a wet May.

Water remains pooled over cement 2 days after rain. 

In fact, the day after the polytunnel went up, it rained solidly all day and half the tunnel flooded. The water coming off the tunnel pooled and flowed into the tunnel. Now, Alex has to put in a drain, for which he has started digging. Fortunately, the rainwater softened the earth and I was able to rake the soil a bit more evenly where the cement vehicle had left hideous muddy tire tracks dug into the soil. 

The last couple of days, we've spent breaking up and collecting the excess cement that had spilled on the floors around the posts. We'll use the rubble to fill the trench 

New drain diverting water downhill. 

The rain came off the tunnel and into the inside. 

Drainpipe that's been lying around waiting for this project for years. 

World wine production plummets

The Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin (OIV) in its press release called it "A historically low 2017 production especially in Western Europe due to unfavourable climate conditions."  GLOBAL ECONOMIC VITIVINICULTURE DATA estimated 2017 World wine production  at 246.7 mhl, a fall of 8.2% compared with 2016.

The science of wine

Original edition cover.

Current edition.

Being a scientist by training, I would naturally be attracted to the scientific side of things, although I do believe that viniculture is as much an art as it is a science, perhaps even with a little witchcraft thrown in. Maybe like in the book Blessed are the Cheesemakers we should be humming the Sound of Music to the grapevines to make them grow luscious grapes.

Anyway, this title -- The science of wine -- by Jamie Goode caught my attention.  Curiously, the first edition has a subtitle FROM VINE TO GLASS. The second edition in the photo has the same subtitle and was published by University of California Press and is being sold for $39.95.  The copy I purchased has the title Wine Science and subtitle The Application of Science in Winemaking. Personally, I prefer the simpler from vine to glass which says it all without redundancy. The publisher's name, Mitchell Beazley, also appears on the cover of my edition, which is confusing as I have never heard of that imprint and it looked just like another author's name. That version is available on amazon for $23-26 and shows it being shipped from the UK. Not to be confused with the Wine Science, Fourth Edition: Principles and Applications (Food Science and Technology) July 7, 2014 by Ronald S. Jackson which sells for $122.45 in print and $77 in Kindle. All versions are hardcover. Confused yet? I was but it is worth the effort.

Current edition, different publisher?

The fact that the second edition was released April 1, 2014 makes it that much more interesting to me, as it's not only April Fool's Day it is my namesake day. Yes, St. Daria's Day is April 1. But I wonder why they changed the title. The edition I have shows up with a publication date of April 10, 2014.  So what made them change it between April 1 and April 10? It may be that one is published in the US and the other in the UK but why would both be available in both places. And why change it to a title that is already in use. Plus the author released a Kindle only supplement which has the chapters that were cut from the second edition but appeared in the first edition. Among them was the chapter on the effect of global warming, so naturally I had to buy that, too.

But anyway, I seriously digressed.  The book is divided into three sections. In the Vineyard, In the Winery, and Our Interaction with Wine.  That makes a lot of sense. As I sat down to read it, I was pleasantly surprised by the author's style. It is not overly scientific but rather quite readable.  The author's own knowledge and experience is supplemented by analysis of the most current scientific literature and interpretation by experts in each of the fields. It is a rich mixture of fact and opinion that he presents the reader.

The first part covers everything that affects the vineyard from the biology of the plants, terroir in terms of soil structure and climate, the interaction between roots and elements in the soil, key diseases and pests, different theories of plant management, biodynamics in the vineyard, moisture control and stress, and trellis systems, pruning and canopy management.  In a short 87 pages, I felt the author had imparted a wealth of knowledge that would serve us well in growing the grapes for the first few years.  I will come back to this book time and again.