Brits shifting to new varieties

Chardonnay grapes
BerndtF, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are among the grapes being cultivated in England with notable success. Pinot gris (Pinot grigio) is another. Lesser-known varieties like Pinot Meunier are also making it to the table, taking the British still wine production out of the white and into the red realm. And short-season varieties like Madeline Angevine and Baccus may be worth trying.  This is very encouraging as it means we were on the right track. Here are a few new varieties highlighted by Decanter. And I definitely want to sample the Bolney Wine Estate Pinot gris.

And then there's also Sweden which is coming along fast as a wine-producing region. A fine place to make ice wine. They grow mainly Solaris and Rondo, which we know all about. And they make the point that their grapes get a long day of sunlight up there, as do we. Let's hope for a good season. 

Alex and I both had some respiratory illness over Christmas, most likely RSV by the symptoms, so we're ending the year with a bummer, but we'll be getting out into the vineyard as soon as it clears up. Time to start pruning.  

I hope you all had a good Christmas, and here's to hoping for a much-improved year in 2023. 

Our dormant vineyard last week

Views from the top of our hill. 

What a beautiful day!

It was a gorgeous day right from the start. Puffy clouds, gentle breeze, reflecting colours, cold and crisp but not unpleasant. Ghosty and I got to work mid-morning. First up -- the polytunnel.

Did some weeding and turning of the soil surface. Fed the plants with fulvic acid to strengthen their resistance to moulds. Checked on the progress of growth (lettuce seeds have sprouted and peas will soon be ready). Pulled a few dead plants. 

Then we had lunch and moved on to the vineyard. I made good progress on pruning the vines. Completed the long row of Solaris and finished the Chardonnay. Will probably need some edits when I review what I did as I tend to be a bit conservative the first time around. 

The only vines left to prune are the short row of Solaris and the Albarino, which really don;t need it yet. 

I was also tying things up and trying to use the new tool Alex gave me for Christmas but I just couldn't get it to work for me. 

The weather is going to turn bad tomorrow for the next few days, so I am glad I made progress today. 

The pruning continues

Alex has done a fine job on the first 10 vines that are now 6 years old. They really grew a lot last year. You can see from the piles of cuttings how much had to be removed from the lot. 

I went out to continue pruning the Solaris vines that are now 4 years old. They grew quite a lot, too, this year. Most have reached the top of the support posts.  It's quite satisfying to cut them back. But every time I go out, it soon starts to rain and I stop, especially since Ghost complains. 

The last sunrise of 2021. Don't look back. 

 

Vineyards in Denmark

Maybe we are not so crazy. I had no idea there were vineyards in Denmark. Whereas we are Europe's westernmost vineyard, they are touting being Europe's northernmost vineland. Since 2000, they have been making wines in Denmark. There are four key regions: Jutland, Funen, Zealand and Bornholm.

We started in 2015 in Mayo. There are vineyards now in counties Dublin, Wicklow, Wexford, Waterford, and Cork. We are not yet producing thousands of bottles, but hey, it's a start and you never know. 

D-Day for Harvest

17 Sep 2021, grape harvest

Yesterday was harvest day. We celebrated Alex's mom's 88th birthday in the morning, then got to work in the vineyard in the afternoon. It took several hours of persistent snipping but we ended up with a laundry basket plus a tote basket full of red Rondo grapes and half a laundry basket full of white Solaris. That's far more than last year. 

There was very little indication of disease and almost no mould. The Solaris leaves are already turning yellow and dropping. The Rondo are still green. Many of the 4-year-old Solaris had at least one bunch of grapes and a few had multiple bunches of very sweet and tasty nuggets.

There was no indication of any grapes on the newest vines (Pinot Noir and Albarino) but there is one bunch on a Chardonnay vine that is not yet ready to sample. 

I sterilised the equipment when we finished picking. We then started de-stemming on the porch until a cold wind came and forced us indoors. It will take another day to destem the red grapes, but I managed to finish the white grapes last night. We even got a harvest moon rising in the evening. 

Now for the winemaking. 

Lovely bunch

Lazy helper

Some were not ready and will be picked later

Heavy load

Juicy little morsels

Filled the RTV

Not a bad harvest

Hanging CDs helped with the birds

Destemming is hard work

California is running out of water

This could be a record bad year for wines, which could result in decreased supplies and increased cost across the board. In France, they are predicting 30% lower yields than normal due to the late frost early in the season. In California, they are reducing their yield on purpose by cutting some of the grape clusters off to concentrate moisture in the remaining clusters to save the crop altogether. 

Many of the classic winemaking towns have restricted water supplies. Some have even denied farmers access to the reservoirs completely. Nearly 1000 landowners in Mendocino county were told there wasn't enough water for them. An emergency law passed enables the government to prohibit people from diverting water. All these people flocked to the sunshine in the west without considering if they could survive there. What to do when you have millions of people and drought for two years in a row? The Russian River valley known for its vineyards is in dire straits with farmers trucking water to their vineyards. The Dixie Fire in the Sierra Nevada is the largest wildfire in Calfornia's history. 

When the NY Times does an article about vineyards suffering, you know it's bad. But it's a really interesting article about two different methods of growing grapes. One manages the vineyard without watering and other interventions, the other waters in interesting patterns. It seems that watering in vineyards causes the grapes to keep their roots shallow. Avoiding watering encourages the vines to grow deep roots in search of water thereby increasing their resilience to other climatic conditions and pestilence. 

We've decided not to water and once again we seem to have made a decision that makes sense without us knowing so scientifically. But it makes sense to me that if vines grow long above ground they would have to grow long roots below ground to anchor themselves. And they do. 

Curiously, when we first moved here, there were no mushrooms growing on the land. Since we planted trees, we've got many varieties of mushrooms popping up all over the place, suggesting that the earth is returning to a natural vegetative state and the fungi have moved in. That means the land is healing itself and for that I am grateful. Land that has fungi should retain moisture better and should also drain better as they add structure to the soil that enables penetration. 

As of the 12th of August, at 122 mm, we've already had twice as much rain as in all of June or July. The grapes are finally getting plumper. But do they have the time to get to a nice size before veraison?

 

PS Hamel Family Wines switched their vineyard to dry farming with excellent results.