Champlain Valley - Grapemans' vineyard - Planting to small winery

[grapeman]

I got my St Pepin picked today along with what Chardonel there was. The Chardonel clusters were huge, but had gotten too tight and between the hail and all the rain, I lost about 50 percent of them.


The St Pepin I currently only have 20 bearing vines but have about 375 total not counting the ones in the nursery. They should all be bearing next year as that will be their third leaf. My original 20 had about 18 pounds per vine their third leaf average. So if I get that many next year I will have over 3 tons of St Pepin alone.


The 20 vines this year gave me 525 pounds or 26.25 pounds per vine average. I got some pictures of them, but they are in the camera in the winery tonight- maybe I can get a minute to post them tomorrow.


We are expecting a boat load of rain again- 2 inches tomorrow and another 2 inches tomorrow night. I have gotten the grapes most susceptible to splitting picked now so hopefully they will be ok, even though the rain will dilute the brix some. When it stops raining, I will pick the Niagara - about 4-500 pounds. The Concord can wait some more along with the Catawba, although the sugars have gone way up in them this year. Then I have about a ton and a half of Frontenac left to pick. Sometime in there I will also clean up what is left of the Buffalo and Steuben that haven't been picked for table grapes for the roadside stand.

 

[grapeman]

As I said I would post a few pics of the St. Pepin here are a few of them and then some of the Niagara I picked today.

Now Niagara

And a Concord

 

[Wade E]

Wow those are nice and plump. My buddy came over with his Merlot grapes to use my crusher and again they were tiny little things from Lodi. Are these also usually tiny like this? I must say the crusher did a fantastic job on these grapes though unlike the Chard. Almost every berry was plucked very nicely off the stems and not one stuck to the screen inside unlike the chard where the whole screen was almost clogged and I really had to get in there and hand scrape them out into my tub. Brix was a little low on the Merlot grapes IMO at 22. We left it alone and will adjust PH and Brix tomorrow after letting the enzymes do some work but before inoculating.

 

[grapeman]

Wade, you do realize the screen comes easily out. Remove it and just tap into the container and most of the skins fall off into the must. The only grapes that are small berried this year is the Frontenac as usual. Even so, some clusters are over a foot long and almost as wide. I'm sure the 3 inches of rain yesterday plumped them up even more.

 

[AlFulchino]

looking great Rich....did the sugar numbers get up there?

by the way...your hands are not purple....and i can draw some conclusions from that

 

[grapeman]

The sugar did get up there, especailly the St. Pepin. I was picking the Niagara before those pictures Al so the acid in them cleaned the purple off for the first time in a few weeks. Don't worry, after picking them, I went to Frontenac and it looked like I was bleeding all afternoon. My hand is almost black right now. I need to press tomorrow. I would like to keep picking, but the other stuff is more pressing! I also need to transfer another couple hundred gallons to tanks and carboys.

 

[Wade E]

Yeah, I know that only because a friend of mine told me after he used his for 2 years struggling to clean it before he realized it came out! The Merlot grapes were about the same size as the Chard grapes.

 

[AlFulchino]

i have found that if you simply spray your hands w a k meta spray, it does a fine job of cleaning your hands....discovered it when a white rag covered in wine came out looking pretty good...so i grabbed the spray bottle and soaked my hands....lo and behold...stain was severely reduced

 

[Wade E]

Are you going to start taking showers with Kmeta?

 

[AlFulchino]

since only my hands get purple..the answer would be no....are you inferring that you have wine stains in other areas? please no pictures...thanks in advance

 

[grapeman]

Here is a picture from Leon Millot from part of the NE SARE Trial. The marker on the sign didn't show up well, so I added text and I wanted to see how it worked online.

 

[fivebk]

Looks great!!!!

BOB

 

[ibglowin]

Rich,

Looks like you are growing FrankenGrapes!

Wow!

Huge and beautiful color as well.

 

[ibglowin]

Both my Merlot and Cabernet from down South were tiny things as well.

It would probably take three of em to make one of Rich's FrankenGrapes!

p. My buddy came over with his Merlot grapes to use my crusher and again they were tiny little things from Lodi. Are these also usually tiny like this?

 

[Randoneur]

Both my Merlot and Cabernet from down South were tiny things as well.

It would probably take three of em to make one of Rich's FrankenGrapes!

p. My buddy came over with his Merlot grapes to use my crusher and again they were tiny little things from Lodi. Are these also usually tiny like this?

Tiny berries, high skin to juice ratio - that's a good thing!!!!

 

[AlFulchino]

lookin good...bees like that variety

 

[Wade E]

Never thought of it that way!

 

[AlFulchino]

picture this....you have several rows of a variety that honey bees like.....you shake the trellis...before picking...out come a noticeable amount of bees...they dont bother you unless you grab a cluster and one is sitting on the cluster sucking out juices......so you pick and they go to join their brethren on the adjoining row.....so you finish one row go to the next...same thing except a bigger cloud of bees leave the trellis after several shakes of the trellis.......by the 3rd, 4th...5th or more rows....the bees add up ...

when you pick up a bucket of picked grapes there can be many dozens of bees hovering around and IN that bucket...all you can do is grab that handle and walk......and hope they dont want you...any 99% of the time you are left untouched...thankfully....now wasps and others.....thats another story

 

[Randoneur]

My wife and I pick together - she has a special "wasp dance" (she just can't help it)

 

[grapeman]

My hands are purple tonight. I picked Frontenac grapes from the trial. I will have data when I finish and have time to enter it. Picked the first of three rows. There again was a huge difference between the VSP and the 4 Arm Kniffen. In general they averaged 22-24 pounds per vine in the VSP, some more, some less. Depending on the canopy management used, they were in varying states of entanglement. The cluster thinned ones and check or control were especially entangled. In general there were many more small green shot berries in them. The Shoot thinned panel was a bit better with larger clusters and many fewer green berries.


The 4 Arm Kniffen averaged about 30 something pounds depending on the treatment. They hung down nicely everywhere and the clusters were larger and had few shot berries in them. Since I wanted to pick them all at the same time, they were getting a bit more ripe than I would normally pick them. The shoot thinned panel suffered yield-wise because of it as quite a few had shriveled and fallen off the bunches. That panel still had a greater weight than any of the VSP ones at about 25 pounds per vine. The one vine that was not as overripe had 41 pounds on it. I feel the others would have been comparable if not over ripe.


Ended up with around 750 pounds in that row of the trial.


I still have two more rows of them to pick for that section of the trial


We get more wasps and yellow jackets than honey bees in my grapes.