Disappointing harvest

Shrivelled grapes

We couldn't harvest yesterday because Alex had to show Ross House with little notice. We had a lot of commitments this week, and I hadn't looked at the grapes in two days. I thought it would give more of them a chance to reach a brix of 20 as they were hovering around 19 three days ago. 

When we started picking the Rondo this morning, it quickly became apparent that we'd had a crop failure. Without rain for so long, in those two days, most of them turned into raisins.  I was gutted. We only had a few good bunches. Very tasty, but hardly enough for a bottle or two. 

A good bunch

The full harvest of Rondo.

Meanwhile, the Solaris also reached veraison. We picked what was there -- so little for the number of vines -- but our yield was barely half a bucket. Lots of hens and chicks but really tasty and sweet. Most were from the younger vines not the older ones. I just don't understand what went wrong. There was no early frost or major storms. 

You can see the damage to the foliage caused by the drought. The only good news is that the birds didn't eat all of the grapes. Our strategies must have worked:

• Kites flying overhead
• Heron on the ground
• CDs fluttering around the vines
• No bird food in the garden for the last two months
• Cats prowling far and wide

Curiously, some of the vines are flowering again. They are really confused by this late warmth and sunshine. 

Flowering Solaris

Flower buds on Rondo

Vines suffering from drought

The Pinot Noir is encouraging 

Veraison is beginning

Chardonnay still hard as a rock and sour

Veraison not evident

Hens and chicks

No transparency

Visiting honey bees

The vineyard vista is still magnificent

Farming during anthropogenic climate weirdness is going to be a challenge. 

World wine crop down dramatically in 2021

It was a really bad year for Italy, Spain and France, which account for 45% of the world's production. Frost during flowering , wet spring and early summer brought mildew, and it was followed by months of drought, causing low yield but high quality. Germany, Hungary and Romania had better weather and higher yields so the EU will still account for about 58% of total yield. 

The Southern Hemisphere recorded its highest yield ever following relatively favourable climatic conditions everywhere except New Zealand, whose yield was down 19% on last year’s but was of exceptional quality. Frosts and cool weather during the flowering season were factors in the drop in NZ. The Southern Hemisphere accounts for about a quarter of all production. 

Meanwhile, China dove into the wine business about a decade ago and was growing exponentially when the Chinese government decided to regulate the industry and cut production quotas by 50% for this year. Overall global wine production was below average for the third year in a row. What is most worrying for the wine industry is that most of the factors involved in the declining yield can be traced to climate change. The long-term consequences mean business unpredictability, crop failures, displaced populations and damaged ecosystems wrought by heat waves, drought, extreme rainfall, flash floods, wildfires and pests.

Most of the wine grape growers are already adapting to the changing conditions. They say vines are extremely adaptable. Maybe we are not so stupid after all. 

Comparing dates

I reviewed historical posts and compared them with this year's notes. Surprisingly we harvested last year on Saturday, Sept 19, 2020 and this year on Friday, Sept 17, 2021. I thought we'd be delayed this year but it was actually two days earlier. The year before, on the 15th of Sept 2019, all the ripe grapes were gone. We had delayed the harvest by one day due to atrocious weather. Very interesting indeed.  

I've ordered a handheld refractometer, so next year's harvest date will be more scientifically determined. The Brix scale is calibrated to the number of grams of cane sugar contained in 100 mL of water. Therefore, the Brix % reading equals actual sugar concentration. Grapes and wines typically have a reading between 14 and 19. Although not everyone treats it scientifically. 

Interestingly, the grapes started fermenting even before we added the yeast. The natural environmental yeasts must be quite active here. I need to study biodynamics more intensely now. The musty smell was quite pleasant. 

Yesterday, the NY Times published an article about the specialists who developed Covid 19 with anosmia. With the loss of their sense of smell and taste, they lost their expertise. That hadn't crossed my mind but it must be awful. A dentist years ago severed a nerve when administering anaesthetic. I lost my sense of smell and taste in half of my face and had no feeling in half my tongue for years afterwards. In fact, I think I still have impaired senses. But for an oenologist to lose his or her nose would be tragic.

Sunnyhill Vineyard in Oxford England is harvesting today I believe.  Their method of growing grapes is more traditional. It looks like their vines are about the same age as our oldest - so about 6 years. 

Harvest time and making wine

 

Alex holding a small bunch

Hey, great news. We had our first grape harvest after 5 years of waiting on Saturday, September 19th. This is what it looked like. The bags seemed to work. We had a sort of double-blind comparison.  We bagged many but left some. The bagged ones were much nicer than the unbagged ones which seemed to have been largely picked by the birds again. Some of the ones that hadn't been eaten, looked like raisins. But we got a yield of three buckets from the 5 vines.

About 3 buckets worth from 5 Rondo vines

I think we really did not expect a harvest as we hadn't read up on how to use the equipment I had bought last year. Our starter kit contained 2 monstrously large plastic vats (when compared to the volume of grapes), some sterilizer, a stirring paddle, some tubing, a sampling pipette, yeast packet, bottle washer, and hydrometer and graduated glass test cylinder. It did not contain Campden tablets. Campden Tablets are sodium metabisulphate, which prevents oxidation and bacterial infection when bottling wine or cider. It provides long term stability to the brew. So we are going without them for the first phase. 

Sulfites comprise a range of sulfur compounds -- particularly sulfur dioxide (SO2) -- that are a natural by-product of the fermentation process. They work as a preservative against certain yeast and bacteria which will quickly destroy a wine if they start to multiply. But fermentation alone doesn’t produce enough sulfite to preserve a wine for more than a few weeks or months in the bottle, so winemakers add extra in order to keep microbes at bay. A well-made dry red wine typically has about 50 mg/l of sulfites. Wines with lower acidity need more sulfites than higher acidity wines. At pH 3.6 and above, wines are much less stable, and sulfites are necessary for shelf-life. 

I sterilised all the equipment per instructions I found online, and I washed the grapes and discarded any that were unsuitable. A few were mouldy, so I picked them off and washed the rest. I hope that's what one does. Alex picked the grapes off the stems and put them in the sterilized vat.

I had bought a book for beginner winemakers and at least we found a recipe and instructions. We crushed the grapes partly by hand, and then I used the flat end of my wooden meat mallet, sterilized, of course, to complete the press. We were going to use the apple press but were advised against that by the book. 

The specific gravity was 0.9 and the goal was 1.09, so we estimated the amount of sugar water required and got to 1.1 on the first try. We were pleased with that. I placed the lid on with the airlock engaged.  It's good to have the first try of winemaking on a small batch. 

I ordered Campden tablets for the next phase so hopefully, we will be okay if whatever contaminant doesn't destroy the must. Plenty of people don't use Campden tablets if they are producing wine with naturally occurring resident yeast. I've also now ordered a 5L demijohn for the next stage and a second of everything that could be easily broken per the advice of another knowledgeable blogger. So now we stir and wait. 

Perfect little packages and very sweet

Some were picked clean

A few weren't quite ripe

Some even unbagged were lovely

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!

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.