Norton harvest + musings on spiders

[deboard]

So I decided it was a good day to harvest my nortons, I have 9 vines, but we had a late frost, and only one produced anything significant. It's somewhat sheltered, unlike the rest, which are out on the trellis. I ended up with just shy of 14 lbs, with 13.5 lbs of that from the one vine. I know that's probably too much to allow on one vine, but when you only have one producing it's hard to pinch them off early.

They were just shy of 23 brix, but even though I had bird netting on them, something was starting to eat them. I would guess I lost a pound or two to whatever that was.

What really surprised me was the sheer amount of spiders in them. I filled up most of a 5 gallon bucket, and then filled the bucket up with water to clean them. Since I don't have a crusher/destemmer I planned on doing it by hand and freezing them. I found at least 10 Very Large Spiders, and 3X that smaller ones. They just kept floating up to the top as I removed grapes. Being an Arachnophobe, this was not an entirely enjoyable experience! But my love of winemaking won out in the end.

That got me to wondering about how much of what we call "Terroir" is actually the species of spider that lives on the grapes, because I can't imagine that they don't get crushed with the grapes and become part of the wine in the end. So do french spiders make better wine?

So I have 14 lbs of grapes, not much really. Last year I used my meager 2 lb harvest in a batch of Vintner's Harvest black currant, which ended up turning out good. I have two juice buckets coming (more than likely unless the grape order goes through). One bucket of Petit Sirah and one bucket of Chateuneuf de pape.

Would I be better off adding these grapes to one of these buckets,? And if so, which one would be the better choice?

 

[robie]

It is hard to protect such a small number of plants. In some large vineyards, the end rows are sort of a sacrificial offering to some of the critters around. They get to the first row and sort of linger there, saving the rest of the vineyard.

Well, sort of... I know, it is not that cut and dry, but it serves to make a point.

Did you spray for insects at all? I and others helped a friend pick one ton of Nortons two weeks ago in SW Iowa. We found some spiders, but nothing like the number you described.

 

[deboard]

I did spray for insects throughout the summer, but I have not for the last 3 weeks or so since I knew I was harvesting. I use sevin liquid concentrate, and I didn't have a significant bug problem other than some ants that ate a few grapes off one cluster.

The weird thing about the spiders is I didn't see a single one while I was getting the clusters off the vines, but once I filled the bucket with water they started popping to the top, so I guess they were inside the clusters. If that's the case, then they would probably end up going through the crusher/destemmer as well.