Pruning, staking and tying

Dyna-Living Vineyard Tying Tool  

We have been working away at pruning the vines, staking those with broken supports, and tying the primaries onto the stakes. Alex bought me a cool concept machine to use for tying. It sounds impressive and promises a lot, but it leaves much to be desired. It takes an engineering degree to figure out how to load it. It works like it's supposed to about 50% of the time, leaving you frustrated and wasting plastic tape and staples. 

I finally finished today but ended up hand-tying quite a few that the machine just couldn't get around or when I just couldn't get it to work properly. I'm sure part of it is practice, but many times either the machine didn't grab the tape properly or it didn't staple but cut the tape.  Anyway, it's now done. And we have amazing weather for the next week. 

What's most amazing is that in January we still have a rose blooming in the vineyard!

The pruning of the vines has begun

 

The weather has become stable and we had a cold snap, so it was time to start pruning. We need to finish by mid-January. I started with the easy vines - the 2 yo Pinot Noir and the 3 yo Chardonnay. I finished those two before it started to rain again. 

Alex tackled the 6 yo Rondo and Solaris vines, which required much more severe pruning. He's doing a nice job, cutting back to a point that will become more productive for us next year. 

Ghost naturally had to help and Mini supervised from a distance. 

It will take a few days to finish the task, but I am not concerned about getting it done before January 22. 

One of my Christmas presents from Alex was a tool for tying up vines. It took a bit of practice to get it to work. Another present was a wildlife camera which I have wanted for some time. On this first night of using it, I managed to snag great photos of a fox. Foxy has been spotted in day time before. Tonight, I'm hoping to catch sight of a pine marten. Then I will move the camera to the vineyard to see if we can spot the badger and see what else lurks in the darkness. 

I gave Alex a gift of red Viking Irish wine made by David Dennison in Waterford. His first vintage is a blend of Rondo, Regent and Pinot Noir. Very encouraging. 

It was a somewhat festive Christmas despite the rampant spread of the Omicron variant of Covid. Everyone we know was either sick or a close contact of a confirmed case. Knock on wood, we've managed to escape so far. With our booster shot delivered two weeks ago, we should be okay through New Year's Day at least. 

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Winter Solstice

Polytunnel Christmas Tree

I am so excited. Tomorrow marks the day when days start getting longer again. The Winter Solstice on the 21st of December is always the great turning point for me. It's the shortest day of the year delivering only 7:23:41 of daylight. I go from wondering if I'll be able to make it through the winter to looking forward to the grand stretch in the day. 

This year, once again, with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreading around the world like wildfire, they are live streaming sunrise from Newgrange today, tomorrow and the day after but not allowing any visitors in. Today, the forecast is for dense fog on the east coast. No luck with the light. 

We've had grey greyness for days now and will have it tomorrow, too. Wednesday and Thursday we are to have heavy rain. Then nice on Christmas Eve and a gale on Christmas day. Alex and I are on duty Christmas Day at Ross House so we'd be inside all day anyway.

I will start pruning in the new year. I've been reading up on new thinking about pruning. It seems some say to do a partial pruning as normal but to leave more vine until March or after bud break to prune as that will delay bud break and avoid frost damage. It's a method that may mitigate the effects of climate change. I don't think we can afford that given our short season, especially given that the result was lower sugar content. 

For now, it's just confusion about everything in life. At least we got our tree up. And the one at Ross and the one on the raft in the inlet. Three trees in two days -- a record of sorts. Oh, and a little artificial one in the polytunnel because we happen to have three of them. 

So, Happy Christmas everyone! We'll see you again after. 

Rosnakilly Raft Tree

Our tree

Ross House Tree

Back to work

The clocks changed this morning and we had forgotten to reset our alarm. So we were awake earlier than the rest of the world. The EU had voted to stop the clock changing nonsense, but deferred due to the pandemic. Bah-Humbug. 

The forecast was for heavy rain in the afternoon and evening so I got out to the vineyard right after breakfast. There was a 4 yo Chardonnay vine down with its support broken at the base. I didn't think we'd had much wind overnight. I called Alex and he immediately came up to pound in a fence post and secure the vine. It's fine, thank goodness. Then he went down to the shore to bail boats in between rain bursts. 

The land is so wet and there was evidence of new digging by the badger. I am tying up the new growth, removing the pink ribbons, and replacing tape with stretchy nylon ties. I got the Rondo-Chardonnay row done just as the rain started and the midges attacked. Boo-hoo. It was only about 11:00 am. Ghosty came to complain about the rain and to get me to return to the house. But I managed to secure the loose Solaris vines on the horizontal supports on the way down. 

At least I got the most important row done. The 2 yo Chardonnay vines had grown quite a bit and might have been whipping in the wind. Plus the pink ribbon was now very tightly bound to the vines. We lost three vines, two possibly because of the pink plastic ribbon and electrical tape. I'd like to replace those three, plus some of the others that didn't make it. 

It's raining very steadily now. It's going to be a very soggy Halloween, which we just learned originated in Tulsk, Co. Roscommon, Ireland.  So far it looks like a very mild and wet October, but I'll report the monthly figures tomorrow. 

Oh and all the wine containers have started bubbling again. Very good news.

Badger holes

Badgers like grubs

Chardonnay on the right,
Solaris on the left

A rather terrified self-isolating introverted pumpkin
this year.

“Rathcroghan, the Irish Otherworld & the Home of Halloween” 

Pinot Noir second to burst

 

Alex took a photo of our first bud burst among the Pinot Noir vines yesterday. It's not leafy yet and given that it's a cold week, I'm really surprised. Curiously, last year we had bud burst on all the varietals on the same day. This year not so. I think the Pinot will do well for us. 

I reported the bud burst to the UK Vineyard Report and noticed that they want reports at every stage. We only reported bud burst last year. This year, I'll have to record and report bud burst, frost, flowering, veraison, harvest and end of season. My little contribution to monitoring climate change. 

Weather yesterday 7-4-21

Station             Rain Max     Min Sun Wind

Newport Furnace 2.1 12.7     2.7 6.2 (11)

Finished pruning

 

We finished up the pruning and staking of the vines in two days. Alex did the older vines and I did all the rest. My take on how the vines are doing is that the Solaris are delivering mixed results - some vines are very vigorous and others are weak. I don't know if this is normal, or if some are being subjected to conditions they don't tolerate well, like drowning in areas of poor drainage. The Chardonnay vines are also mixed -- some doing well, others weak and one possibly dead. The Pinot are doing surprisingly well and the Albarino surprisingly poorly. I would have expected the opposite. 

Our weather has been alternating between beautiful but cold, and horrible but warm. As tomorrow is the last day of January, I'll look at the weather stats for January next week. Let's now look at 2020 as a year, a horrible pandemic coronavirus year that ended with horrible US election angst. At least now things have settled down in that latter corner and vaccines have arrived. 

The December climate report shows the month was cooler, wetter and windier than average. And our area had significant outliers:

• Highest daily rainfall: 27.5 mm at Newport, Co Mayo (15% of its monthly LTA) on Sun 13th
• Lowest mean monthly temperature: 4.3°C at Knock Airport, Co Mayo (at its LTA) (its coldest December since 2010)
• Lowest monthly total sunshine: 31.2 hrs (daily mean 1.01 hrs/day) at Belmullet*, Co Mayo 

Overall, 2020 gave us above average rainfall, temperatures and sunshine as a nation, but that was mainly in the south and east. Our area again showed outliers:

• Highest annual total rainfall: 2051.7 mm at Newport, Co Mayo (128% of its LTA)
• Lowest mean annual temperature: 8.9°C at Knock Airport, Co Mayo (0.4 above its LTA) 
• Highest air temperature: 27.1°C at Newport, Co Mayo on Mon 1st June 
• Lowest annual total sunshine: 1252.0 hrs (daily mean 3.42 hrs/day) at Belmullet*, Co Mayo

*Sunshine data is from the Autosol Network. LTAs for these sites are currently not used for comparison purposes.  

We also endured eight named storms and five months with storm force winds recorded. What this means for viticulture only time will tell. At least now we have our horticultural food and research (HFR) number. The research is well underway. 

Abysmal Autumn weather

a few leaves still hanging on

The past week has been abysmal weatherwise. We had Hurricane Epsilon on Thursday, Storm Aidan on Saturday, an unnamed low today and another tomorrow. We've had torrential rain, thunder and lightning -- something I've never experienced in Ireland, hail, sleet and wind, lots of wind. The buy off the coast here, M6, recorded a 30-metre (90f)t wave and the surfers were out having a blast. 

We had 227.9 mm rain in October, that's 67 mm more than last year in the same period. All the other variables were pretty average for the month. 

We've picked the apples but waited to pick the remaining pears which were beautiful this year, but they were all gone. Alex thinks the crows stole them. I just don't know. The berries are almost done now, just a few raspberries and strawberries left, mostly rotting in the wet weather or getting freeze-dried by the wind. 

The wine is clarifying. We will soon bottle the two or three bottles and wait for the requisite time period to sample. With our second lockdown underway and unable to travel more than 5 km from home, we're keeping ourselves busy. 

What a year! The American elections are tomorrow, and we voted long ago by email and mail ballot as we are both dual citizens. We can always be hopeful. 

We've been picking the remaining grapes to eat...very tasty

 

Pinot noir on the left
Albarino on the right

Three-year-old vines up the hill

The calm between the storms

So beautiful, but no blue moon

Peachy sunset

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.

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."

Last planting of the season

Today, we awoke to brilliant sunshine and, hopefully, one of the last times we will be changing the clocks. So, we grabbed the remaining Albarino vines, some shovels, gloves, and knee pads, and headed into the vineyard to plant them. The buds were growing and it was time. Alex had pre-dug the holes. He distributed the vines as I got to work.