Vineyard Diary

The Twin Vines Vineyard is our ongoing Red Bordeaux project. In 2006, we instigated a remediation program to move our "head trained" vines into a more standard trellised setup. There were two motives for the switch:

1. Vigor. The 2 acre planting site is on deep soil (for the most part). For example, when building our deer fence, we dug several of the fence-post holes by hand down to over three feet with hardly any effort (right, George?). :) We were still in the black stuff at that depth, and I have no doubt the soil goes down for several feet more. This soil is composed of sandy clay loam, which we should have realized would tend to be more vigorous, and indeed we did choose a close planting (we're on an 8x5 grid) partially due to this.
   
2. Wind. This was the factor we really did not anticipate. In the afternoons, when the temperatures begin to drop, we experience a reasonably strong north-south breeze in the vineyard site. Our head trained vines did not have a trellis, and so their only means of support was the training stake to which they were tied. This worked well during the first year when each plant had only one growing shoot. However, into the second year when we had more shoots growing from the head of the vines to form the "gobelet", the afternoon wind conspired with the vigor and pulled a percentage of the vines away from the stakes, on a daily basis. It became a daily chore to pick the vines up from the floor and retie to their stakes, and of course vines that are on the floor are prime targets for rabbits and other vineyard residents, so it was pretty unsatisfactory. Additionally, all that vigorous growth along the vineyard aisles when the vines blew over made the rows impassable to all but foot traffic as one row would tangle with the next.

So, not satisfied with what we'd created, we decided to change things. I reported earlier this year about the steps we planned to take. Now that October is here, the vineyard is winding down for this cycle and we can report on progress through the summer. In summary, progress was very good! Our unilateral cordon training was a great success and now the majority of vines have fully grown-in cordons with a set of shoots from this year that will comprise the spurs next season. We did not do any replanting this year to replace the odd vine that has failed over the past 3 years, so that is a task for next spring.

We were on a good spray program (although spraying was minimal - we only sprayed three times) and so there was no sign of the mildew problems that were prevalent in this valley last year. There were some issues, however:

1. Leafhoppers. Eventually, we sprayed these little critters, but for the first part of the summer the little leaf suckers did some superficial leaf damage and made the more mature leaves pretty ugly looking, with the holes and subequent damage caused by their feeding. The numbers were not so high that the vines really suffered, and they were somewhat diminished with the stylet oil that we sprayed earlier in the season. This is something we'll keep an eye on for next year, but in any case the damage seems largely superficial.
   
2. The birds! Hitchcock would have been proud. This year, even though harvest would have been a bonus (with the remediation steps we were taking, the fruit was produced from buds growing from the cordon rather than from spurs), we did end up with quite a bit of fruit. Or we would have if the birds had not beaten us to it. As the different varietals ripened, the birds moved along through the rows, and our new fangled "electronic bird distress call simulator" slowed them down only a little. It is amazing that birds can eat so much, but eat they did. Next year, we will have to net, for sure. Chalk that one up to experience!
   
3. Dripper end-caps. Of all the things that could cause trouble, this was one we did not expect. Due to the particular layout of our rows, and because we replaced the folded-over tube ends of previous seaons with compression fit end caps, we found that something (we speculate it is built up air pressure) was blowing off the end caps at the high end of the vineyard, on a daily basis. We've regulated the water pressure in the drip system down, and fitted end-caps with a auto-venting valve, and that issue seems to have gone away. It did become somewhat of a running joke around here though, and of course they would never blow off when watched. :)

Other than that, things went very much as planned. We harvested only a few 10's of lbs of fruit this year due to aforementioned birdies, but next year we'll pick a couple of tons, all being well. The trellis has worked exceedingly well, and the inverted L of the cordon is directed out of the wind, so wind has not been an issue at all this year. Any vigor that the vines exhibit is now directed upward into the catch wires on the trellis, where it can be managed without blocking the aisles.

All told, we are very pleased with the turnaround. There is one more step we need to take this year, which is a pre-dormancy application of vine nutrients, which we will do by drip system injection. That will happen in the next week or so and then the vines will slowly fall asleep for the winter, ready to begin the cycle over again with pruning in spring 2007.

I've prepared a chart (below) for those interested, showing the varietal and clonal makeup of the Twin Vines vineyard. All these vines are grafted onto 110R rootstock, which so far seems to be a good match for our conditions.

Still to come this year is the harvest of Petit Verdot from Argyle Vineyards. The cool September and (shock horror) rain today are slowing things down a lot. This is far from a bad thing though - previous years with cool end season conditions have yielded exceptional wines, so we are very optimistic.

Steve Wetherill
http://www.escafeld.com

Row	Varietal/Clone	Count (row)	Count (type)
1	Petit Verdot 02	49	49
2	Malbec 04	50	50
3	Cab Sauv 07	51
4	Cab Sauv 07	51
5	Cab Sauv 07	47	149
6	Cab Sauv 04	36
7	Cab Sauv 04	33
8	Cab Sauv 04	39	108
9	Cab Franc 01	36
10	Cab Franc 01	33
11	Cab Franc 01	30	99
12	Cab Sauv 15	30
13	Cab Sauv 15	30
14	Cab Sauv 15	29
15	Cab Sauv 15	29	118
16	Cab Sauv 337	29
17	Cab Sauv 337	29
18	Cab Sauv 337	29
19	Cab Sauv 337	28	115
20	Cab Sauv 338	28
21	Cab Sauv 338	28
22	Cab Sauv 338	28
23	Cab Sauv 338	27	111
24	Merlot 314	27
25	Merlot 314	27
26	Merlot 314	26
27	Merlot 314	24	104
28	Merlot 15	22
29	Merlot 15	20
30	Merlot 15	19
31	Merlot 15	17
32	Merlot 15	16
33	Merlot 15	14
34	Merlot 15	8
35	Merlot 15	4	120
Total Vines			1023