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Ah, sorry I just realized what you were getting at. I don’t use oils so I didn’t realize that captan can potentially become phytotoxic when mixed with it; I’d only heard about sulfur. The Bonide Captan that I spray with is 48.93% so a significantly higher dose than what you applied. Looks like...

Not sure what your concern is if you applied last Wednesday and haven’t seen damage: the neem oil or the captan? Was it over 90 degrees when you applied the oil? I’d be concerned that you need to protect against black rot right now and neither captan nor neem oil will give you coverage against it.

It might help to know more about your spray protocol (timing, dose, etc.). Are you mixing all of those together? Are you disposing of leftover spray or keeping it? I spray with mancozeb (downy and black rot) and sulfur (powdery) every 7-10 days early in the season for the first 6 applications...

I think several studies have shown that TWC increases yield: http://northerngrapesproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/VSPandTWC-webinar.pdf. For me, I chose VSP for my Marquette for ease of spraying and netting.

I’m behind last year in Northern Virginia, though not as far behind as you appear to be in Northern Washington. I seem to be about 10 days behind where I was last year and comparing Growing Degree Days from this year vs 2021 on Growing Degree Days | GreenCast | Syngenta that looks about right.

I’m no expert on this but what I’m finding with my hybrids that I’m training to VSP is that the nodes on the shoots/cordons can be spaced much further apart than on my vinifera. Therefore, in order to maintain 4-6 shoots per foot I’ve allowed some of the cordons to overlap at least until I can...

Lol, I thought the same thing when I pasted it. Looks like they tried to fill it with hashtags or something.

Looking good! A friend of mine works for Montgomery County a bit south of you and the county just broke ground on Crossvines, which will be a custom crush facility available to Maryland growers...

Welcome to WMT! There are several of us in Northern Virginia that try to get together from time to time and a few others in different parts of the state.

Congrats! Looks like your Chardonnay narrowly missed medaling. Did the notes give you ideas on what you could do to improve it?

Congrats, Fred! Anything else from the tasting notes you found interesting or surprising?

No worries - it’s great hearing about the people and experiences that have inspired folks, too. In my case it was quite a while before I started meeting actual winemakers so I track my inspiration and development by wines I’ve had that introduced me to something new and exciting, that made me...

Forgive me if this has been done before already, but I thought it would be interesting for folks to share particular bottles of wine that either inspired them to begin winemaking or to improve their craft and take it in new directions. For me, it was a bottle of 1999 Les Vins de Vienne...

That starting Brix does seem pretty high. Does the winery you got them from usually do a spontaneous ferment when it’s that high, and/or are they going for some residual sugar? As far as I can tell, the ‘natural’ winemakers in France that I follow don’t seem to let their grapes hang that long...

Thanks for the excellent report - sounds like a great season! Are you at all concerned about the starting pHs - especially on the Grenache and Pinot Noir with the whole cluster maceration? I went 40% whole clusters with spontaneous ferment on my Marquette this year and the pH went up from 3.10...

The 2019 and 2018 were almost night and day to my taste and I don’t remember getting the musty oxidized smell or taste in the 2019. The ’19 had nice dark fruit with a solid acid backbone running through it that I really liked. I wonder what the variables were between the two that could have made...

How many times have you racked so far?

This sounds similar to an issue @mainshipfred had with his Petit Verdot from Virginia grapes a few years ago. I thought it just tasted oxidized but he was pretty sure it was VA. I hate to be discouraging and hopefully there are other suggestions, but in his case I don’t think a solution was...

It is an interesting question and I’ll be interested if others have examples of folks who press based on taste. The Oregon winemaker interviewed at the end of this article says they taste every day to monitor how the wine is evolving through its maceration, though he doesn’t specifically say...

I think it’s a stylistic decision. I read about macerations from about 4-6 days to 4-6 weeks depending on the grapes and what what the winemaker is going for. Lighter, easy drinking ‘glou glou’ reds seem to be getting more popular with some of France’s younger artisan winemakers and those tend...