Archive for February, 2012
Dormant Winter Pruning — and other Vineyard Considerations
After a long winter that sometimes seemed like it would never end, spring planting is just around the corner. And despite all the time we had to prepare for the new season, we are now feeling not quite as ready as we’d like to be.
We’ve ordered 150 vines –50 Petit Verdot, 50 Cab Franc, 25 Viognier and 25 Petit Manseng – and lately I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night wondering if we’ll have everything in place in time to plant. I’m still worried, but we’ve made enough progress lately, especially this weekend, that I’m feeling a bit better about the whole enterprise.
The Nelson County Vineyard - complete except for the trellising, vines and deer fence!
Our biggest concern is the trellis. If you’ve followed our progress through this blog, you’ll note that I didn’t worry about that last Spring when we planted 14 vines, split between our Fairfax and Nelson county properties, but that was different on a couple of counts. First, those vines were more for our education than for the eventual production of wine. And we’ve learned a lot from taking care of those vines. Wine in two years would be a bonus, but it wasn’t the goal when we planted them. The second reason I didn’t obsess over the trellis is that I didn’t expect those vines to reach the height of the first wire in that initial year. And since there are so few Continue Reading–>
Every Grape is Different — Notes from a Vineyard Conference
The Virginia Vineyards Association brings together commercial grape growers, hobbyists and others with an interest in viticulture, and its efforts to promote cooperation and the exchange of information is one of the reasons that the Commonwealth’s wine gets better every year. I believe, and I think most of the growers who participated in the association’s technical meeting in Charlottesville last week would agree, that the reputation of Virginia wine is influenced by every bottle that’s sold. If someone has a bad experience the first time they taste a Virginia wine, they may never try another. So all of us have a vested interest in doing what we can to help each other make the best wine possible.
- Seven glasses ready for tasting. The bottle of “SanTasti” is a palate cleanser.
Another reason for the success of the Virginia wine industry is the work that’s being done at Virginia Tech by folks like Tony Wolf, Bruce Zoecklein, and Mizuho Nita, all of whom played major roles at the meeting. Tony Wolf’s book, Wine Grape Production Guide for Eastern North America, has become our bible as we move toward planting a small hobby vineyard, and Mizuho Nita’s blog is the indispensible guide to grape disease management.
However, this was my first encounter with Dr. Zoecklein, and I’m hopeful now that it won’t be my last. Dr. Zoecklein has written the book (actually, at least four books and too many articles to count) on wine chemistry, and he manages to make the chemistry both accessible and practical for people like me. And since this was a class on “Sensory Evaluation for Grape Growers,” he taught the class through the tastes and aromas of seven separate wines, which we tasted blind throughout the class. Continue Reading–>
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