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Here in Murrieta, CA I cut my losses a few weeks ago after the 3rd consecutive week it dumped rain on my vines since the day tropical storm hillary dropped 2.5 inches in 24 hours. My Merlot came in at 24 brix and Cab at 22, but my Zinfandel was covered in scattered green berries. Rather than...

Oh man, It'll be interesting to see how much bird pressure you'll get when the grapes start smelling sweet, I'm guessing you must be dropping all your clusters at this point? I consider myself lucky that I haven't really had a wasp problem yet, I saw a couple eating some of the ppat harvest...

Possibly, there's only so many grapes a flock of local birds can eat I suppose. They'd certainly decimate my 30 vines... I actually just visited Hawk Watch winery today in Warner springs and they had the same side netting on their vines in that Plantra link I posted. They are much smaller...

Installing and removing nets is the bane of my existence, but it has been the only way to keep this massive gang of sparrows from devouring my small backyard vineyard every summer. I've tried these side nets, which work well if you seal the top and bottom every 12 or so inches, but it takes...

Depends on the varietal and watering practices, but in most cases I've seen my merlot clusters weigh about 6 oz a piece on average, whereas my zin clusters weigh about 16 oz on average, so if you know the average weight of your clusters you can count them and get a decent rough estimate. I...

Thanks for the reply. That actually makes the most sense given that it's typically only on the top of the leaves.

I didn't start checking brix until last week, after hurricane Hillary dumped 2.4" of rain on my vineyard... The merlot and Cab have been a nice dark purple for several weeks now. My zinfandel has a lot of dark black berries, but also a lot of scattered green berries. There is still some green...

This happens every year during ripening around August and I've dug around the internet extensively but I don't seem to be able to identify what exactly causes this, so I'm hoping to get some ideas from other growers who may have seen this issue. The interesting part is that it's only on the top...

I personally don't make kits anymore as they all had a weird sour / sweet / funky flavor to them that I can't get past and find it hard to accurately describe. For the record I've only made master vintner kits, so maybe FWK are better as people have stated. That said, when I did make them I...

I googled 4 arm Kniffen and it looks like you could still pull that off with some patience. This is a great illustration of how you can approach this: https://pubs.nmsu.edu/_h/H303/ So essentially, your goals for the coming seasons are as follows: 2023 Growing season - allow the currently...

Thanks that helps a lot. Here are the issue I'm seeing based on your Reponses: 1. Grapes typically need to be deep watered and then allowed to dry out for a few days. I personally water mine twice a week for 30 minutes with 2 gallon / per hour drip buttons, once on Monday morning and once on...

Great, ok, i just wanted to be sure as the wood looks aged. This seems like a fairly young vine. The most significant issue I see isn't as much the growth that died but the fact that only a few of those buds in that long vertical cane (and the one that splits to the right) actually popped in...

It may just be my eyes, but that cane with the dead leaves looks to be 2 seasons old. Is that second year or 3rd year wood those upper buds that died came out of? In other words, did that vertical cane that is tied up to the top wire grow in the 2021 season or 2022?

I've sprayed my vineyard every couple of weeks with Bonide wettable Sulphur since bud break. There have been signs of possible black rot throughout the vineyard (leaves with circle burn sores) but I've plucked those leaves as I've seen them and kept it to a minimum. My vineyard is comprised of...

That burning and those shriveling berries looks like multiple issues I've had in the past. The berries look like they were cooked over a high temperatures spanning a day or two. I used to just assume I could water my vines the same amount at the same interval every week and they'd be fine, but...

Here are some pics of the vines I bought from the above link. Planted 2/13/22: Growth by 10/13/22: Growth by 6/11/23 (I cut the canes off to about 2' because they were so heavy they were breaking off the trunk and I'm doing a head trained system)

To answer your question, I've had really good luck with vines from this site. There is a limited selection and I can't say of they will ship to your location, but the vines i grew from these dormant plants are extremely vigorous in their second year...

I recently read somewhere that you should spray before bloom and then after fruit set when the berries reach 1/4" in size. That window this year was several weeks for me and one of those days it rained so I (anxiously) waited about 2 more days after the rain and decided to spray sulfur again...

It's hard to tell due to the shadow and picture quality, but the leaves on that little one appear to be curling and I think I'm seeing some shriveling / burning on the right side of the pic. If that is the case it could be several possible causes, the first question is did you fertilize this...

Gotcha, well if you consistently added kmeta in that manner and you're sure you fully dissolved it before adding it to the carboy then I think you can rule that theory out. I've never seen anything exactly like that in my wines, but I have seen other random specs or floating bits, but that has...