Champlain Valley - Grapemans' vineyard - Planting to small winery

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Some of you wonder why you would want to leave some bunches of grapes to help control vigor in young vines. I tried leaving some clusters on the more vigorous vines this year to see what effect it had on helping control their growth. Nothing scientific here, but here are some shots of vines I left very few grapes on in their second year. It has been one month since they were thinned a little and trained and weeded. Then I show the results of having to thin out some of the tangled mass to get them under control.










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Same vines after pruning to resemble a vine
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What had to come out
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A vine balanced by some grapes without any additional pruning-more the way I want them.
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A St. Pepin with grapes left for balancing
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Another Frontenac
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Edited by: appleman
 
That makes a big difference. These are two year old vines right? Seeing that I don't know much about pruning grapes. I will have to let some bunches on my new vines next spring. It's good to let mother nature take care of some of it. This is about what they look like now. Some have reached the top wire now.
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Thanks for sharing.Edited by: swillologist
 
Appleman I'm blown away by what you are doing there, looks great every time you show us! Swill thats a good looking vineyard also, couple years and I will be happy to come mow the grass for you!
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just don't watch. Something truly serene and peaceful about looking at a vineyard.
 
Thank you! I can't let SWMBO mow now or she will eat all the grapes.
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It's not a real big vineyard. But with the orchard and all the wild things we have around here. I have enough to keepall mycarboys full. All that I have empty right now is a 3 gallon one. It will be full when the grapes that I haveget fully ripe.
 
Wow! I'm impressed!!


Appleman, you live in upstate NY & your grapes are good quality? For some reason Ithought grapes were grown in warmer climates??


Maybe I can grown some in my yard...
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Swillologist Yes these all are 2 year old vines.


The jury is still out on my quality of all varieties, but with proper variety selection they will certainly grow here. There are quite a few award winning wines made across the lake in Vt in the Champlain Valley and also some very good ones grown north of the border in Quebec.


I will be going to Willsboro on Wed to help put up bird netting and will try to get more pictures at the Research Farm of the vines a year older than mine. When I was there last, they had a pretty heavy crop on them. Check back a few pages for some pictures I took in July.Edited by: appleman
 
Appleman....Your vines are growing like mad.....you sure have a lot to maintain.
Where I live is it too late in the year to do any pruning on the young vines I moved this spring???? I want them to harden off so they will be able to winter over....so I have just let the babies run wild and make all the growth they can to build good roots and get established....
I am kind of going by roses...no dead-heading in Aug onward so the canes will harden off.
Will be looking forward to the photos...I am most interested in the vines that are grown with multiple trunks.
 
NW,
With the pruning I am doing, I am not promoting new growth. I am taking out extra whole canes, not clipping the ends. It is when you clip ends that it forces laterals to grow. By taking out some of the extra bull canes, etc, the plant has more energy to put into hardening off the remaining shoots and canes. The vines have put the energy into the roots, so there is actually more stored energy and root reserves by removing some of the canes.


Yes it is a good idea to let the ones you planted this year grow somewhat unchecked. I will say though that I planted another 75 Frontencac this spring. I left some to grow unpruned and untrained except to attach to the stake. I pruned the other half to a single shoot and trained upright. The unpruned vines have about 3-6 shoots up to 18 inches high, whereas the trained ones are about 5 feet high with a much thicker cane. They are alos getting several laterals so I think the mass is about the same, but I think I prefer the single shoot. It's a good thing grapes are very foregiving and grow pretty much no matter what we do to them.
 
All I can say is WOW!! That's amazing, Appleman!!! I sooo need lessons!!
 
I can't believe the amount of sugar the Frontenac produce. They barely started changing color a week ago and some of them are getting reddish. Out of curiosity tonight I got out the handy dandy Refractometer I got from George last year and tested a couple berries. A little squeeze and out came the nice juicy juice, already reddish in color. They are already at 15 brix! I'm used to Concords and Niagaras that get about that high when they are fully ripe! It will be interesting to see what they finally get up to when fully ripe.
 
Well, you look for the trifecta of acid, Ph, and sugar. Don't ask me what the numbers are though!

One vintner I spoke with goes by the ph instead of the sugars. He feels he can add the sugar, or water, but adjusting the ph just doesn't give him the results. Judging by the wines of his I've tasted, he's on to something there!

Another looks at the sugars primarily.

This weekend we start harvesting Edelweiss, Brianna, and a couple others. In about 2 weeks we're looking at St Croix, and about 3 weeks for Frontenac... This is just south of the Twin Cities. Grapes are about 2 weeks early this year. My friend can't wait to get them off the vine. Hail decimated his crop last year, and just a few days ago he had a close call with hail... We're talking FEET away from destruction... You should see the neighboring corn field!
 
I went down this evening to Willsboro to help with the bird netting. It didn't go on hard at all. !4 foot netting over the top and fastened underneath. We just used cabob skewers to knit them together. It went pretty fast- only a couple hours to do 10 rows about 250-300 feet long.


The grapes have reached veraison and most have pretty good color- a couple days ahead of mine, but they are 40 miles south of me.


Saw a few new faces there I hadn't seen before. One young man came up and introduced himself. A very nice young man. Bilbo might recognize the name- Andy Farmer from Vermont. He has a nursery that specializes in the cold hardy varieties. Had an enjoyable evening with some nice people.


Harvest is a few weeks off and is estimated to be better than a ton and a half from 300 vines. They are 3 year old vines and very vigorous. I got a few pictures, but I'll have to see if any of them are light enough. I didn't get them until dusk.


And NW, I agree with Bill, you can just taste them and check the seeds. But then again, my Millot have brown seeds and have barely begun to turn colors so that doesn't always indicate ripeness.
 
Sounds like you had a good time appleman and got some good experience also.
Tomorrow is picking day here. We just have two vines here right now that areready.So it shouldn't be a verybig job. The late cold spell this spring was hard on them. There isn't very many grapes on them. One of the vines has very few grapes on it. I am hoping we will have enough for a small batch. Edited by: swillologist
 
Sorry, Most of the pictures were unsalvageable. I lightened a couple to show a few grapes, but they don't show the multiple trunks well NW. Some of them were still so vigorous that they wished they had left even moreshoots on for clusters.


Here's a couple- 1 Marquette-the red and 1 St. Pepin or LaCrosse(not sure which-the labels were too faded to read in the light)


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I had to build trellis today(or at least start) for some of the vines started this spring. I was just going to train them on stakes this year, but they got so big that they kept tipping the stakes over. While I got a few pictures of it I took some more of the vines and vineyard.


Frontenac
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Leon Millot


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St Pepin
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New trellis going up
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Edited by: appleman
 
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