The Bacchus Beat – notes from the vineyard
Hello everyone, Bacchus here. I wanted to provide you with some the highlights of this growing season. This year it was unusually cool and wet. For us it was comfortable but grape vines like it hot and on the dry side. Neither of these conditions occurred this year. This had an impact on the grapes and will be exhibited in the resulting wine that I will comment on later in these notes. Another somewhat unusual but good experience was the lack of Japanese Beetles. The little rascals appeared in late June and we sprayed the entire vineyard on June 28th. To our amazement they did not reappear until into the harvest period. At that time most of the leaves had toughened and were not as tasty as they were when they were younger. The damage caused to the vine at this late a date was considered minimal. More importantly we do not spray during the harvest time period even though the sprays we have selected are safe to use up to several days before harvest.
As I mentioned in the last Bacchus Beat winter was not kind. The Cabernet Franc was severely damaged and it was apparent early on that there would be little to no fruit. The summer was spent nurturing new growth from the base of the vines. Most of the existing canes were damaged, but kept to have some vegetation to support the root system and encourage new growth. The Riesling to our surprise showed great resilience to the cold and broke a great number of buds and set good fruit. Our other vines Chambourcin, Foch, Traminette, Vidal, Steuben, and Cayuga all did quite well setting fruit.
Like many agriculture operations it is not always the weather that creates concerns. This year it was birds, flocks of them. We learned two years ago that you have to be ahead of the birds before they get interest and prepare accordingly. This year we started netting on July 29th a full month before we harvested the Foch on August 28th. Last year we were able to net the vines as the grapes started to ripen and this worked out well. This year to our horror the birds starting attacking all the grapes regardless of the stage of ripening. Last year we harvested the Riesling on October 11th. This year the vines were stripped of grapes by the birds by early-mid September. These grapes had not even started veraison (the process where green grapes turn either red or yellow). As we saw this occur we had to purchase another 2,000 feet of netting to save the grapes we had. We let them take the small amount of Cab Franc and concerted our efforts on protecting the other vines. The netting along with scared devices both audible and visual warded off most of the birds and we settled in on harvesting.
It became apparent early in the growing season that we would not be able to harvest the grapes between the four of us so we enlisted the help of some willing and interested patrons. With their help we were able to get the grapes harvested and processed usually within 6 hours. We started with the Foch on August 28th and finished with the Vidal on October 10th. The yield this year was 5,150 pounds. This is an increase of 50% over last year. A special thanks to Jon, Cheri, Pat, Bob, Josh, Kelly C., Mike, Kelly K, and Ron. Your help is greatly appreciated. Hope to see you next year.
After the harvest we had only a few weeks to get ready for winter. All the vines were hilled this year even those vines that do not necessary need their base trunks protected. We did on those vines to encourage sending out new roots in the spring. Those vines that have to be protected will go through the labor intensive process of removing the soil. Trellising of newer vines will continue through the winter months as will the repair and some broken supports. In March we will spray for over-wintering diseases and start pruning in late March through April. Bacchus has ordered some new varieties of vines and will tell you about them in the next spring Bacchus Beat. Until then….oh so what about the grapes we harvested? Eric, the winemaker noted in his November Newsletter that cool weather throughout the growing season and into harvest has kept the acid levels in the grapes relatively high. This means a fantastic year for the ’09 white varietals. The acids will keep the wines extremely crisp while the flavors will jump out of the glass. The ’09 reds will lean towards a more fruit-forward characteristic. The exception will be the Marechal Foch which will have uncharacteristically more body than in years past as we let the grapes hang a bit longer.
Bacchus can hardly wait to taste the fruits of everyone’s labor.
