Hello and Welcome,
For longtime readers of this
FLOG, you know Dena’s birthday is the first week of June. This happens to
coincide with the wine berry vines going into bloom, aka flowering. Ernie likes
to think he gives her the biggest bouquet of flowers every year!
Each of our 43,872 fruiting vines
has about 30 inflorescences (potential clusters) that contain about 100
flowers each. A quick sleight of hand with the trusty abacus yields about 131.6
MILLION flowers. That’s one big farmin’ bouquet! And the aroma is just
heavenly, almost as nice as Pinot Noir!
On Julian calendar day 151 (May
31) the first intrepid vines to show flowers were Pinot Noir clone 777 grafted
onto that soil colonizing 44-53M rootstock. That is the good news. Well that
and wine berries are self pollinating. They do not require the wee little honey
bee to pollinate the flower and set fruit.
The bad news is that this
flowering event was directly followed by about 1.25 inches of rain over the
next 2 cold and blustery days. Even the Hummingbirds were grounded. Flowers
often times do not pollinate and therefore will not turn into wine berries when
the weather turns “carppy.” The result is a winery full of empty wine barrels.
That’s bad enough, but just wait until the birds find out there is nothing to
raid!
But Mother Nature has a back up
plan and it is called a “fruiting tendril” aka the wing. This is a part of the
cluster that typically flowers a week or so after the main cluster. The idea is
that the weather will “change” (think climate change on a micro timeline) and
the flowers on the wing will pollinate and set fruit. Of course the debate is
whether the weather will change for the better or worse. And that depends on
who you ask.
This is like good judgment, which
comes from experience, which often times is the result of bad judgment. Ernie
is turning 50 again this year and he has a working theory. More of a case study
really.
So, what can we glean from all of
this apparent gibberish?
Well (a hole in the ground with
water in it,) we can add 105 days of ripening time to day 151 on the Julian
calendar to come up with a potential harvest window opening about day 256. This
just happens to be Sunday, September 13, 2015. This may be a bit early, but
then again it depends on who you ask. As in, “No, I haven’t found the harvest
buckets yet!”
Since we write this from an “ex
post facto” perspective, we know that on June 4th the weather
changed to be dry and sunny with a light breeze. This led to other clones of
Pinot Noir opening up their flowers ready to pollinate resulting in the fruit
all being set about the same time. This contributes to even ripening on the
cluster. And that means uniform and well developed flavors and aromas in the
wine berry skins. Even the Viognier won’t be able to hold back.
Taken as a whole and “in situ” we
expect fairly uniform ripeness on the cluster and we will snip off the late to
ripen wings, as we always do. The birds will arrive late and be forced to eat
cake, as all of the wine berries will be harvested. And those that are not will
be netted to thwart the little blighters. It will in fact be “The vintage of
the year!”
Kindest Regards,
Dena & Ernie
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