Vineyard work

I spent several hours in the vineyard yesterday tying up the vines in advance of Hurricane Don's arrival in Ireland. The tropical storm spent several days meandering around the Atlantic before briefly becoming a Cat 1 hurricane, the first of the season. It's already dissipating but due to head toward Ireland, so I'm being cautious. 

I was delighted to see how the grapes are progressing and how many we are going to have this year if all goes well. Even the Albarino are coming on better. The young Solaris vines have large bunches of grapes, the way I expected them to look. 

Rondo

Solaris

Rondo

Pinot Noir

Young Solaris

Apples

Delivery

It is convenient to offload inside

Alex ordered the materials Dmytro spec'd from PJ Kelly's who delivered them first thing Monday morning because Friday's deluge caused them to beg off. It arrived just in time at 9:30 as we had the men scheduled to begin at 10:00 AM on the first day. 

Meanwhile, Ukrainians Dmytro and Alexander have started building our winery room in the shed. They made great progress in just one day. I can visualise it all now. It's going to be insulated and temperature controlled. A clean room within the shed. It's all perfectly proportioned now. I can't believe we actually had this built. 

EU wine sales are down

The EU has stepped up to help wine producers at a time when the 2022 harvest produced high yields, and the increasing inflation put a downward spin on wine sales. On top of that, exports were down, resulting in a significant loss of income.  If I read the notice correctly, they are subsidizing the distillation of wine into spirits not for consumption. 

The lows just keep coming

 

We've had quite a bit of rain lately, alternating with fleeting sunny spells. The pattern is weird, however, as this procession of tiny lows keeps passing through. It's quite pleasant here, even chilly, whereas Continental Europe is having a protracted heatwave in uncharted territory. Sixteen cities were put on heat alert today and tourists are being told they cannot go to the beach, they must remain indoors from 1100 to 1800h. 

The result of our weather is a rapid growth of the beautiful little morsels on the vines. We watch them plump up before our eyes. It's a glorious sight to behold mid-July. Grapes of joy! Let's hope the harvest is a good one. 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1680475482444144640 

We spent the afternoon picking stones from the field in which we built the shed. There are a great many stones in that field, lots of which have to be lifted with a crowbar. Alex noticed that we'd had an earthquake, as a fault line between the undisturbed ground and the backfilled land had opened up. Had we not put in the retaining walls, we would have had a landslide. Anyway, Alex spread grass seed today so hopefully it will soon sprout and cover the blemished land. 

Possible names for the shed:

• Highland Chateau
• The Office
• The Pension Pad
• Retirement Plan
• The Upper Suite

Climate change is improving British wines

A lost young man took over his family's newly purchased neglected vineyard and made an award-winning wine. He credits it to climate change altering the conditions sufficiently so that the old Baccus grapes made an exceptional British wine. He's got a new career path, his family has a viable vineyard and winery, and Britain has a new hero. 

Aside from that wonderful story, Brits are being told to plant Chardonnay for the future. Here is the original study that came to that conclusion. 

Weather potential for high-quality still wine from Chardonnay viticulture in different regions of the UK with climate change

Alex J. Biss, Richard H. Ellis

Vol. 56 No. 4 (2022): OENO One

Received : 7 March 2022; Accepted : 1 November 2022; Published : 5 December 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20870/oeno-one.2022.56.4.5458

The last touches

 

Five electricians are installing the electrical systems in the shed today. The foreman, Rusty (Rostyslav), is Lithuanian, two are Irish and two are Ukrainian. Cool!

The garage doors will be working later today. They are installing lights, sockets, a fuse panel, etc. They are also grounding all the steel girders to protect against lightning strikes.  

They will also be wiring up the polytunnel to code. And they have to fix the heating system in the house. Lots of jobs at once. As they are also working on the Kenright's house, they can keep it all in the neighbourhood. 

First drought, now rain and lots of it

Met Éirann has posted a warning for heavy rain tomorrow and we are in the right place to get it. We've been having quite a bit, but not as much as many other places in Ireland. So our microclimate seems to be holding. 

It seems everything 'climatic' is accelerating. Both the US and Europe are having massive heat waves. NY and Vermont experienced record flooding with two months' worth of rain falling in less than 6 hours. China and India are having massive heat waves and torrential rainfall. Meanwhile, the southern land masses are drying up. El Nino will just accentuate it all. Power grids are failing. 

Tornadoes touched down near Chicago airport and near Dublin airport (Dublin?). Tornadoes are forecast for Quebec and Ontario. Tornadoes are ripping through Ottawa as I write this. The videos circulating are apocalyptic like in the movies. This is climate breakdown. 

The earth's average temperature just keeps climbing, Antarctic ice is at its lowest ever and it's winter there, the average SST keeps increasing, and the hot blobs in the Atlantic off Ireland and Florida are crazy - Florida waters topped 90F today. Can sea water boil? 

And on top of that, scientists say the oceans are becoming greener. 

The scientists are starting to say there's no going back now. Last week, I resigned myself to the idea that the rest of my lifetime will be spent in relative comfort here, where temperatures are to remain bearable. But the rainfall may prove to be problematic, we'll see. 

I think having access to wine will help. And the donkeys are just fine. 

Maria Moch came to visit from the States. She loved the projects here. Alex managed to hang the gate and the electricians are hooking up the electrics to the tunnel and the shed. We should be all to code. 

After the storm

We had high winds overnight into yesterday morning. Upon checking the vineyard, I noted quite a few branches broken off the Pinot Noir which is showing vigorous growth. I tied most of them up as high as I could and took a few branches to root. The Solaris and Rondo were looking good and the younger chardonnay vines seem to be struggling. The Albarino is starting to look a little stronger but still inferior. I stuck a broken stem into the ground to replace a dead vine if it roots. 

As I was tying, I noticed that quite a few of the Pinot Noir (year 3) have tiny clusters of grapes. I think I will try one or two in the polytunnel to see if they produce better crops sooner. The Vanessa grapes in the polytunnel are almost ready to pick. 

I bought a storage box for the vineyard at Lidl yesterday. It will let me keep some of my tools nearby so I don't have to walk all the way to the shed or the polytunnel if I see something amiss in the vineyard that needs attention right away. 

Meanwhile, the storm knocked a lot of apples off the trees, especially the big cooker. And Alex planted all the trees along the new fence by the shed and hung the gate, while I picked stones from the field. There are a lot of stones out there! 

I'm glad it's raining today as we need a break. The showers bucket when they come and the sun shines in between. The southern half of the country is under extreme thunderstorm warning. They said the winds were unusually strong for this time of year. The gusts topped 55 knots yesterday morning. They shifted from SW to SE and now we have easterlies again. What the hell is going on here? It was the warmest June on record, with prolonged dry periods and intense thunderstorm activity. 

Climate change is here, my dear! The prolonged heat wave in the Atlantic is indicative of climate change, Met Eireann says. Recent extreme precipitation, thunderstorms and above-average temperatures across Ireland could be linked to the elevated sea-surface temperatures and marine heatwave we have experienced in June 2023.