Category Archives: In The Vineyard

Flowering and Fruit Set

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Posted by Gus on July 26, 2010 – 2:02 pm
Filed under In The Vineyard

Despite the cold, wet spring the vines have valiantly produced flowers, and have optimistically set a plentiful-looking crop. This is certainly a relief to growers and winemakers alike, who have been concerned about the difficult spring weather and the effect it may have on the 2010 vintage.

The only lasting impact from the wet spring has been to delay fruit development by about two weeks, which has most of us hoping for a warm, dry September and October.

That other pesky weather event of 2010, the May frost, has had the unfortunate, albeit not unexpected, effect of peppering certain areas of the vineyard with secondary shoots, whose clusters are forming yet another two weeks behind the already-delayed primary clusters.

The photo above (from July 7th) shows a still unopened, recently formed flower-cluster, from a secondary shoot, while the cluster on the lower right has already finished flowering and has set fruit – yes, those little green balls will become ripe, golden berries on this Viognier vine (or so we hope).

Few people want to harvest a vineyard block twice, picking the primary clusters on the first pass and the secondaries on the next (not to be confused with the small secondary clusters that emerge later in the season from lateral growth up higher in the vine’s canopy). For that reason, and to avoid the possibility this fall of mistakenly picking undeveloped clusters into a bin of otherwise ripe fruit, these secondary clusters will be removed at the time of leaf thinning, within the next week or two.

And quality? Of course we all want to be able to predict what sort of promise the vintage holds, but the truth is that at this point there are far too many variables at play. So far the summer is dealing us a very good hand, providing plenty of sunshine without excess heat, so the vines are able to photosynthesize as much as they’d like. The next point of reckoning will be at seed-hardening, when we’ll glance at the calendar again and see whether we’ve made up any of the lost time.

The Glamorous Art of Pruning, Part 2

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Posted by Gus on May 24, 2010 – 3:07 pm
Filed under In The Vineyard

Nearly two months have passed since I wrote about pruning. Here in the Rogue Valley we’ve spent much of that time waiting and worrying. It has been cold, and very wet, and our vines are off to a slow start. On May 6th we had a frosty night, with temperatures dipping several degrees below freezing and causing some damage to the tender, young shoots.

From an academic perspective, these are interesting times to evaluate the pros and cons of the two main pruning techniques, spur and cane. From a vineyard management perspective, however, it is downright annoying. The results of the frost will be felt throughout the growing season, requiring additional hand-work and a sharp eye to spot the shoots and clusters which, having formed from secondary buds when the primary one got frozen, will be ripening fruit (if at all) at a pace behind that of the majority of the vineyard. We will have to be vigilant early on about removing any fruit which threatens to be unripe at harvest time.

Upon inspection at Gold vineyard, the spur-pruned plants appeared to have done a little better in the cold, if only because at each spur position there were five or six green shoots, so there was some insurance against loss of the uppermost (albeit the most fruitful) ones. The vines with canes that were frosted, however, will likely have areas devoid of healthy shoots and will yield a reduced crop as a result.

Still, there are plenty of very healthy-looking shoots out there. These are Viognier from Gold vineyard:

This cane-pruned example shows how nicely this pruning method provides a well-spaced, uncluttered line of shoots, making the process of shoot thinning (removing excess shoots to prevent crowding) relatively fast and easy. This is, in my mind, one of the big advantages of cane pruning, compared to the relative clutter of growth at each spur.

Which would I rather shoot-thin? One can see that there is fairly little to do to the cane, while the thinning of just two spurs on a cordon required some careful work on this Sauvignon Blanc at Upper Five Vineyard.

Before shoot thinning:

…and after:

Terry Sullivan has chosen cordon pruning, with its orderly rows of short spurs, for his vineyard for the simple reason that he doesn’t like to cane prune. Regardless of his motivations, it seems a wise choice considering the vigor of his Sauvignon Blanc, and the wider spaces between vines to accommodate its growth habit. Cane pruning can be troublesome at spacing greater than six feet between vines, so the permanent cordon makes sense here.

Still, just like the pruning process itself, the resulting shoot-thinning process is more repetitive and simple with the spur, and more nuanced and subjective with the cane. When evenness and consistency are the goal, the spur is difficult to get wrong, and so is currently the preferred choice of most winegrowers in this region.

We would be wise to remember, however, that the first buds on every new shoot in 2010, whether it grows from a cane or a spur, are forming in unfavorably cool conditions, which will tend to restrict their fruitfulness in the following year. Spur-pruned vines in particular may shower fewer, smaller clusters in 2011 because of this cold spring. The good news is that this can sometimes mean less work thinning the crop down, and may even bode well for a low-yielding, high-quality vintage.

But first we’ll get through this one.

The Glamorous Art of Pruning, Part 1

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Posted by Gus on March 29, 2010 – 1:59 pm
Filed under In The Vineyard

So much goes into making a good bottle of wine. Besides the requisite rows of polished stainless tanks and candle-lit chestnut-hooped barrels, there is the furrowed brow of the philosophical winemaker and the vast, imposing backdrop of the arched and pillared winery itself. Surely there is little significance, and certainly less glamor, out in the muddy, dormant vineyard in winter?

Winemakers joke about the most important tool of their trade. For some it is their nose, for some a mop, and now, perhaps, it is even the ubiquitous Blackberry, iPhone, or the like. For me, just ahead of my bicycle, it is a pair of pruning shears. Mine are standard-issue Felco no. 2. I don’t use them as frequently or as vigorously as I used to, but they accompany me on critical trips to the vineyard.

Pruning is not glamorous. It is done in unpleasant weather, all day long, quite monotonously. It is not highly-paid work, and rarely garners public attention like a pressing or a bottling might. Yet the well-executed art of the pruner lays the foundation for the production of all high-quality wines.

Left to its own devices, a grapevine will produce a tangle of shoots, in the hope that one or two will find their way to the top of a tree and produce some fruit there which may prove attractive to a passing bird, thereby assuring the continuity of the species. In brief, the goal of pruning (and subsequent vine management) is to fool the vine into thinking that every one of its grape clusters is so ideally positioned, and therefore to pack every berry with maximum flavor for the fortunate bird. Pruning is also the first, and most important, step in controlling yield, helping assure that the vine’s limited resources are allocated to only as much fruit as can confidently achieve ripeness.

All pruning methods are some adaptation of either cane or spur pruning – two words which capture the somewhat punitive nature of the task. Whether one is employing one of the many common variations on the theme, including guyot, bi-lateral cordon, lyre, Scott Henry, or simple head-pruning, one is still making use of either a cane, shown here,

or a spur, shown here,

to achieve the above goals of fruit-positioning and crop limitation. The obvious difference is that the spur pruning method makes use of several short sections of last-year’s growth to provide this year’s fruiting wood, while the cane pruning method employs one or two longer canes per vine. Thus, while both vines may have been pruned to, say, twenty buds per vine, the cane-pruned vine achieves this with two ten-bud canes, while the spur pruned vine achieves it with ten two-bud spurs. Sharp eyes will notice that the above cane-pruned vine also has one spur on each side, to provide next year’s cane and  spur.

Why should this matter? Pruning style is usually determined by varietal, region, and the preferences of the vineyard manager. Certain varietals may bear fruit more consistently when cane pruned, especially those varietals which do not have very fruitful basal buds – the first bud on the shoot, which is always one of the two or three buds left on a spur. Other varietals perform better when spur pruned, and would yield inconsistently on a cane. Vineyards in cooler regions tend to lean more towards cane pruning, since it is a type of pruning that provides a degree of insurance against wild swings in crop load by not relying solely on the fruitfulness of the first two or three buds on a shoot. Those first few buds are the first to form, and therefore are the most likely to have developed during cold weather, a challenge which can restrict their tendency to bear fruit.

The cane vs. spur decision is also frequently a matter of logistics. Spur pruning of any sort is generally easier to teach and practice, and requires less subjective decision-making on the part of the person wielding the shears. This can be a relief to the vineyard manager looking for absolute consistency in the vineyard, where the varying pruning styles of individual workers does not have any real impact on the shape of the vines from row to row.

Cane pruning is often considered more of an art. The pruner must look at the vine as a whole, select a new fruiting cane of adequate girth, length, and position, make a cut to improve or maintain the desired shape of the vine, then take the added step of planning for the following year by leaving a renewal spur in a location that won’t interfere with the shoots growing from the fruiting cane, and that will maintain a low vine head. A skilled pruner enjoys the challenges of cane pruning, but when it is done badly it can create a lot of extra work in the vineyard.

The look of a cane pruned vineyard in early spring is unmistakable: light, airy, orderly and elegant.

In part two I will explore how two neighboring vineyards employ different pruning tactics, and why.

Organic Viticulture in the Rogue Valley

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Posted by Gus on February 26, 2010 – 10:03 pm
Filed under From The Bike, In The Vineyard

I just got back from my first visit in several years to Upper Five Vineyard in Talent. Terry and Molly Sullivan have been farming this five-acre parcel of vines since 2003, and they’ve been doing it organically from day one. I’ve always thought the site showed promise, but when you combine a great site with the kind of attentive care these two bestow on their vineyard great things can result.

They have planted Tempranillo, Syrah, Viognier, Grenache and Sauvignon blanc in classic Rogue Valley fashion, spanning the globe and a taster’s palate with their varietal choices. To round things out they have embarked on small scale organic pear production, as well as raising organic melons for the local market.

The ground springs underfoot as you step down a vineyard row, indicating healthy, un-compacted soil. Our conversation drifted back and forth from the technical (clones, rootstocks, mechanical weed cultivation, compost, pruning) to the philosophical. Terry likes to say that his strongest argument for farming organically is “because people live here.”

Of course I had to ride my bike out for the visit, to challenge my “intimate knowledge of the land” hypothesis. Unfortunately, this meant riding through a thick cloud of putrid lime-sulfur spray as I passed one of the orchards about a half-mile down the road, so it was a relief to breathe the clean higher-elevation air at Upper Five. My conveyance also created an unexpected limitation when Terry gave me a bottle of Grochau Cellars 2008 Sauvignon blanc, made from Upper Five grapes.

Anyone who has bike toured in wine country knows that a tall, narrow claret-style bottle slips easily into one’s water bottle cage with little more than a mild rattle as one rolls along, yet this bottle resisted the standard approach. My first attempt at securing my gift proved ineffective, as I was only just out of the dirt driveway when the bottle leapt out and clattered down the road. The results were nearly disastrous:

I figured out a better, albeit precarious, way to hold the damaged bottle, and made my way home against a headwind. It has always been my contention that wine tastes better when enjoyed close to its source, and this particular bottle enjoys the distinction of literally touching the ground from which it came. I will give it a week to recover from its rough treatment before sampling, and will report back on how the wine fared.

New Bicycle

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Posted by Gus on January 6, 2010 – 3:43 pm
Filed under From The Bike, In The Vineyard

I got a new bike for Christmas!

What does this have to do with winemaking? It happens to be my personal philosophy that winemakers should make wines only from vineyards they can readily visit by bicycle. This is my “intimate knowledge of the land” principle and is by no means practiced by myself alone, except maybe for the bicycling part. Walking is fine, too, but in the Rogue Valley our vineyards don’t neighbor one another as closely as in some more established regions, so I use a bike whenever possible. Besides, it’s fun.

This bike has a history. The deep wine-colored frame was originally custom built for Sherman Lamb in the early 1980s by Roland Della Santa, who was also busy at the time building frames for Greg Lemond, who was busy becoming the first American to win the Tour de France. Sherman, who was one of the first winegrowers in the Rogue Valley to plant Syrah, sold the bike to his friend Randy Gold a couple of years ago, but it was the wrong size for Randy so he stepped up to a brand new Felt road bike late last summer. Out of curiosity or desire I measured the frame when Randy said he was going to sell it, and voila! A frame custom sized for me.

Randy, of course, is the owner and manager of Gold Vineyard in Talent, from which all grapes for Velocity and Velo wines (and even my new white wine project – more later) are now sourced. How many bicycles can claim such a viticultural pedigree?

My wife, Julia, was kind enough to listen to my irrational explanations for having two bicycles, and presented the new bike on Christmas with a red bow around the handlebars. Thank you, Roland, Sherman, Randy, and Julia. I will try to be a worthy owner of such a machine.

I did get out for a quick ride when some sun broke through after Christmas. It rides like a thoroughbred, or as I imagine one must ride. Lucky me!Bike

Malbec Clones

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Posted by Gus on December 30, 2009 – 1:01 pm
Filed under In The Vineyard

In winemaking circles one frequently hears talk about newly introduced clones of familiar varietals, and how vineyards are either being replanted or grafted over to the new and improved scion. The list of recent favorites ranges from Dijon clones of Chardonnay and secret-agent sounding Pinot noir clones 777 or 115 to Tempranillo’s notorious and dizzying array of clones each masquerading under a multitude of synonyms. Advances in the wine industry are always exciting (to some of us) and seem to be forever offering new opportunities for improving whatever’s in the barrel or tank. While there is no question that the choice of clone has an effect on eventual wine style, it is important, as always, to stay focused on the long view, and to work hard at uncovering the best attributes of the fruit at hand before being seduced by promises from the newcomer.

What is this attack of the clones? For starters, these are not clones in the true sense of the word. Even though grapevines are propagated through cuttings, occasional natural mutations can result in slight deviations from the prescribed genetic code, which, if the variation is pronounced enough, can lead one grapevine to exhibit different characteristics than its neighbor. If the variation is considerable, one can even have such leaps as Pinot noir to Pinot blanc, defining a whole new cultivar within the species vitis vinifera. For those variations that are more subtle, one can see variants within a varietal which might exhibit, for example, earlier ripening, higher yields, smaller berries, or even a definable change in flavor profile. Over the years, attentive vineyard managers have spotted these differences and, by selecting cuttings for new vines from these particular plants they have discovered, in some instances, many dozens of different clones of the same varietal. To the winegrower, it seems as though there are more every day.

In Southern Oregon, Malbec has recently begun to achieve some success, but the question stands as to what role the clone has played to this point. Malbec is a varietal generally associated with the southwest of France, where it is a minor blending component in some of Bordeaux’s great vineyards. Not far from Bordeaux it emerges as the dominant varietal in the “black wines of Cahors”. It has also gained esteem with South American bottlings predominantly from Argentina, where the Mendoza region is renowned for coaxing world-class quality from this previously lesser-known grape. Pre-2000 plantings of Malbec in Southern Oregon, what few there were, used the most available clone 04, which is notorious for poor set and variable yields.

One vineyard in the Rogue Valley tried to conquer these tendencies by cordon pruning to even out set and yield. The vines complied, for one year, then rebelled with a subsequent meager vintage of highly variable clusters. A switch to cane pruning, such as is most often practiced with Pinot noir, yielded good results – but only for a while. Another vineyard suffered through several years running while the vines seemed to want to do nothing but produce vegetative growth with virtually no fruit. An aggressive shift to quadrilateral cane pruning for up to 50 buds per vine brought the vines into balance and eventually yielded substantial improvement in wine quality. A third long-time grower simply tore out the Malbec entirely. It is no wonder that, as interest in the potential quality of Malbec increased, spurred by the experience of those occasional splendid vintages, the promise of a new clone free of such difficulties was received well.

FPS Clone 09, the purported saving grace for growers of Malbec, has had a successful start, showing none of the exasperating characteristics of its predecessor. Reliable yields, now sometimes excessive enough to require substantial crop thinning to maintain wine quality, are the norm, and cluster set is even. Initial wine quality has been very good, albeit from predominantly young vines. The judgment, it would seem, is in.

It is, however, essential to realize that there are more powerful determinants of a wine’s character than clone. The varietal itself, combined with the site on which it is grown and the vagaries of the vintage, account for the preponderance of a wine’s style. Most winemakers would certainly downplay even their own influence in the face of these elements. Here the value of perseverance cannot be underestimated. It would be an easy mistake to rush to judgment on a varietal and clone such as Malbec 04 based on a number of situations in which it has performed poorly. Yet at least one of the Rogue Valley viticulturalists noted above has managed to coax his clone 04 into producing some of the finest grapes in his vineyard, giving an adjacent block of the newer clone 09 Malbec some real competition.

Certainly some clones of Malbec – and there are several more than just the two discussed here – will prove to outperform others in the ultimate category of wine quality, for some vineyards and for certain wine styles. There is also little doubt that rootstock plays a critical role in the performance of any vine, and that no real examination of Malbec clonal characteristics is complete without an understanding of rootstock effect. The real lesson here is to stay focused on the things that historically yield wines of superior quality. As much as clones do have an impact on wine character, the vigneron would be wise to avoid placing too much faith in a particular clone, and to remain attentive to those vineyard practices through which the best nature of the given clone may be expressed.

Cold Snap

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Posted by Gus on December 11, 2009 – 10:14 am
Filed under In The Vineyard

The weather turned cold here in the Rogue Valley this week, with temperatures dropping into the single digits (fahrenheit) at my house and around ten degrees in some nearby vineyards. This is far from extreme, especially for those of you in the midwest or even nearby in Eastern Oregon, but for vitis vinifera it can be damaging to canes and buds, affecting the following year’s crop if the pruning is not done carefully.

Young vines and older vines that were stressed during the growing season are particularly susceptible to cold damage. The vineyard I’ve worked most closely with over the past ten vintages, owned and managed by Randy and Rebecca Gold in Talent, showed excellent health last year so I am not too concerned at this point about the older vines, but we will want to take a close look at the young vines in Block B, which are going into only their fourth year. We’ll be looking for dead tissue in the renewal canes and cutting open some buds to assess viability, and may decide to adjust the pruning to leave a few extra buds for added insurance.

One of my first jobs in the wine industry, after flattening cardboard boxes for a while, was pruning. I should mention that this was in Minnesota, where temperatures of thirty below were all too common, and where a record cold day in the Rogue Valley would be considered positively balmy. We pruned in the fall, between the first frost and the first snowfall, which could be a window of several weeks or fewer than ten minutes depending on the year. Vines had multiple trunks for flexibility, so that as they were pruned they could be laid down and pinned to the ground with steel stakes (if the ground was not yet frozen) or held down with bits of firewood (if it was). If there was time, and the snow was not piling up too quickly, a tractor might turn a bit of soil over the newly pinned-down vine, or one could spread straw over the vine for insulation. The straw also made a nice home for mice.

Needless to say, this was not cozy work, nor was it particularly efficient on a large scale. One of the top priorities of viticultural research in the midwest is therefore, understandably, development of a cold-hardy, disease resistant hybrid vine which is also capable of producing decent wine. For me the easier solution was to move to Oregon where a vine could depend on not being wrestled to the ground every fall, but I have great respect for the dedicated winegrowers of the midwest who are willing to go head to head with mother nature in pursuit of their passion.

Numbers

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Posted by Gus on December 3, 2009 – 10:43 am
Filed under In The Vineyard

I mentioned earlier that the 2005 Velocity and 2007 Velo have very similar blend percentages. Why bottle them under different labels, and why is there such a difference between the wines?

The 2005 vintage was marked by low yields and moderate overall temperatures, but was blessed with a dry fall to allow maximum “hang-time” for the fruit, and therefore full development of flavors and tannins. Fruit came in right up to Halloween during cooling but sunny weather. The resulting lots provided me with a very limited supply of elegant, structured wines from which to assemble a more muscular than usual Velocity.

The 2007 vintage, however, dealt such a different hand than 2005, with cooler weather, higher yields, and mid-October rains which brought the harvest to a quick end. Several vineyard blocks were younger, and we began working with the more fruit-forward clone 9 Malbec. Thus the flavor profile for 2007 was brighter, fruitier, lower-alcohol, and (to use my all-encompassing term for wines of Velo’s nature) “friendlier”.