Winter Vines
Wednesday | 02 December 2009
In a previous blog, I wrote about how the fall provides a window into the general strength of the vineyard. Now in winter another picture emerges. The vines are dormant now - their naked canes laying on the trellis. Now we can see the success of our vineyard plan from the previous year.In winter last year, we determined a plan for the growing season in 2009. We set metrics for ourselves concerning irrigation, canopy growth and management, among other things. During the growing season, we felt great about our practices!
All of our goals were attained. That means things like canopy height were achieved before our target date or that we had uniform leaf coverage over the fruit. But it’s a funny thing about a row of healthy looking plants that are all leafed-out and pretty with fruit: you tend to only see all those pretty things! In winter, we can truly see how each vine grew.
You can see the size of the each shoot, for example. This is critical because the shoots help feed the fruit. If you have been to our tasting room, no doubt you have heard Bill say that we want “uniformly ripe fruit because in the glass, under-ripe plus over-ripe does not equal ripe.” A small shoot next to a large shoot does not equal the wine we want to pour!
– Barbara Steele
