Cover crops and companion plants

A vineyard with cover crop between rows.

My last post dealt with underground fungi that form symbiotic relationships with grapevines. Today, I'm investigating cover crops and companion plants that can be grown with the vines to help promote healthy soil structure and nutrient exchange and perhaps even protect against insects and disease. Cover crops have been used for millennia and are becoming more popular again with the advent of organic farming and the desire to reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides.

Grapevines in partnership with fungi

I've been reading a fascinating book called Mycophilia by food writer and cookbook author Eugenia Bone. She stoked my interest in everything mushroom. I have been most interested in the symbiotic relationship between underground mycorrhizal fungi and photosynthetic plants above ground. Some fungi serve to remove and clean-up diseased and dying plants. Others have symbiotic relationships with specific plants they tend to. Their root systems get intertwined, the plants delivering sugars to the fungi, the fungi extracting minerals from the soil and delivering them to the roots of plants.

New vines have arrived

The new vines have arrived for phase 3 of our planting. The first year there were ten, the second year there were 65. Now we are adding another 66 vines. Of those, 25 are Pinot Noir and 25 Albariño, and 16 Chardonnay, all on SO4 rootstocks.. How we're going to manage them is another discussion.

Of course, while in Alexandria for three weeks, I learned that Viognier vines are commonly planted in Virginia. Viognier — the state grape of Virginia — is a wine made by 76 of the commonwealth’s 230 vineyards as of 2012. In May 2011, the Virginia Wine Board approved the marketing of Viognier as “Virginia’s signature grape,” just as Cabernet Sauvignon is identified with California’s Napa Valley and Pinot Noir with Oregon.

Viogner, that rare French wine that we discovered in St. Martin and brought home cases of it on our boat. In the mid-1960s, a mere 3.2 acres of vines existed in the entire world. It does extremely well in Virginia and is considered quite possibly the best Viognier made outside of Condrieu — home to the Viognier grape in the white-wine capital of the Rhône valley. Alas, as Viognier vines start to hit their peak after 20 years, I don't think we'll be planting many here in Ireland but if Virginia's young vines (mostly <10 years old) are doing so well, you never know. Stick with what you like, right? And we do like Viognier. 

Ullage

Aged Margaux wines showing various levels of ullage. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia. 

Trevor Sharot of Grapedeal.com wrote a lovely note in his blog about our effort to grow wine grapes in the west of Ireland. In it, he introduced the concept of ullage. Like the Angel's share in whiskey, this is the empty space in a bottle of wine between the cork and the wine. While tasting whiskies in Islay one year, I learned about the Angel's Share and thought about my sister who died many years ago now. She had introduced me to Scotch whisky and particularly to Laphroaig where I first heard the term ullage. At the time, I thought Angel's Share was quite appropriate a description as I knew my sister in heaven was partaking of her fair share. But I digress...

ullage

Terms used for fill levels or ullage for Bordeaux-shaped wine bottles.
Illustration by Kassander der Minoer

Dictionary result for ullage

/ˈʌlɪdʒ/

noun

1. the amount by which a container falls short of being full.

   • loss of liquid, by evaporation or leakage.

In my subsequent search for insights into ullage, I came upon a delightful post by John Howe, 'On the fine art of empty space'. I gave myself permission to read it despite falling desperately behind in catching up after three weeks away in America tending to newborn, two-year-old, recovering mom and sleep-deprived dad. I won't spend much time on it here except that I was thrilled to read another word I hadn't heard in years is his 'onomatopoeic' description of popping corks. The definition, in John's words, 'Ullage describes essentially emptiness contained' spoke to me. It relieved me to know that the emptiness was contained, and I didn't have to worry about it anymore. 

Brain stimulation via wine tasting

Okay, here's a mind-bending theory.  To keep your brain super active, taste wine. That's right. According to an article in Food & Wine, wine stimulates more of your brain than any other activity. Not sure how they measured 'any other activity', but hey, I can subscribe to that theory. After all, it's proposed by a Yale neuroscientist. He must know what he's talking about. We'll just have to attempt to prove or disprove it. Very scientific.

The new layout

As the Solaris is doing well, we should have a grape crop in 2019 with which to attempt winemaking. The Rondo is also doing well but not as well as the Solaris. We should also have some red to experiment with. The Chardonnay did well enough to consider expanding production in the future.

We've decided to introduce Albarino, our favorite white wine from the coastal Rias of  northwestern Spain. So Albarino and Solaris will be our white wine crops.

Alex wanted more red, so we will introduce Pinot noir, a short season grapevine with growing requirements in the same range as Chardonnay. That will be our new experimental crop.

We, therefore, will have three experimental and two staple crops.  It's amazing how fast five years can go by.

Pruning into the New Year

After the pruning

Alex pruning the Rondo vines

I'll be staying with my niece in January to help out after the birth of her second child so we took the opportunity to prune the vines today. It was a fine dry day and mild, too. We've had a high pressure centered over Ireland for about a week now and it's been very gray but dry and uncharacteristically mild. The weeks before were drenched by torrential rains. The land was flooded all around us. Lucky for us, our land is sloping. The roses have not ceased blooming, the grass is growing and many plants are budding due to the mild weather. We may even have a New Year's daffodil. I was worried that the grapevines might not be dormant, but they did seem to be.

The Rondo and Solaris vines are doing well and are quite robust except one Rondo. They took severe pruning. The chardonnay vines are looking very nice and were easy to prune and stake.

The one-year-old Solaris vines were very easy to prune. Two of the 50 had been cut by the strimmer when Alex last cut the grass. Two others looked possibly dead. One was missing. So Alex will order five to replace those. The vines were inconsistent in growth. Some were quite long while others remained very small. Could be due to the dry summer.

We've decided to complete the row that has the chardonnay test vines with more test vines. Alex wants red, but I don't want Rondo, so we're looking for short season reds to try. My money is on Pinot Noir, but we'll see. He has also ordered Albariño vines to plant on another section of field. The plantation expands.

Another season comes to a close. Happy New Year to all.




From GuildSomm