Hello and Welcome,
This is the Amalie Robert Estate
Climate Update for May 2017.
Hurry up and wait and then get
‘er done “Right Farmin’ Now” so you can wait some more seems to be the way
forward this May. And in fact, that is just what we did to get the vineyard
floor set with the most exquisite carpet of fully germinated cover crop - EVER.
Oh, you should see what it looks like from out here!
After a very wet spring, a few
days of clear blue sky found Ernie clanking up and down the rows with his
(somewhat) trusty (though quite finicky) Italian steed with chisel plow in tow.
Opening up the soil with the sun and the breeze on your face is a unique
farming experience as was the sun and wind burn he was sporting the next
several days. Yeah he was beaming, quite literally.
Click the image above for a few seconds with Ernie. He's out there all day.
Then it was time for a quick-change
from the chisel plow to the rototiller and we wait for another nice day or two
to fluff the soil to make a comfy-cozy seed bed for the third pass of our cover
crop regime. And the third pass is with the Schmeiser seed drill that puts down
about 30 pounds of seed per acre spaced about 3 inches apart in eight equally
spaced furrows. And then like all farmers, everywhere, we wait for rain. It is
the faith in near term measurable precipitation that that binds us together as
a community of the faithful. And two days later, our faith was renewed with
about an inch of rain.
It is quite a thing to behold, to
see all those estate grown quail out there eating a seed every three inches. And
that’s OK, because just before harvest we always thin off some “wings” and that
is when they will get theirs. You know, Ernie didn’t get invited to try out for
the Olympic shooting team based on his good looks alone.
Of course not everyone feeds their
vines with cover crops, but they should. And if they don’t use cover crops,
they have to use chemical fertilizers or small to medium sized farm animals –
but what do you feed them? You get the idea. Be a steward of the land and feed
the soils that feed your vines, or don’t. The next time you make it out into
wine country, look around then ask – What are you feeding your vines? The vines
know the difference and they will tell on you in the quality of the fruit they
produce. In the real world this is akin to “No Coffee, No Workee.”
And then the vines, once they
started to bud out, needed to be cleaned up a bit. Often times there are just too
many shoots that emerge along the cane and some of them, well, they need to
thinned off. Not really their fault, just growing in the wrong place at the
wrong time. Along the fruiting wire we like to see a shoot every 4 inches or so.
Any closer than that and there is not enough room for what will become a
quarter pound worth of an oh-so-spectacular Pinot Noir cluster. Make a hole, as
they say in the submariner’s handbook.
Those clusters need to be
separated and spaced in the canopy to allow light penetration and good air
circulation to fend off against mildew and bunch rot. And on rare occasions,
when the moon is just right, the sock monster gets loose from the laundry room…
We shudder at the thought.
And we also see some shoots
trying to grow out of the graft union that is just about 3 inches off the
ground. Yeah, that means about 1,452 deep knee bends per acre. That’s farming,
not for the faint of heart or weak of knee.
Then the vines are set – for that
particular moment. Much like when the piston hits Top Dead Center of the
combustion stroke - it lasts only for an instant. Next up we will be running
wires to contain all of the growth that has been focused into these 12 to 14 shoots
that we left on the cane. We imagine with all the currently available soil
moisture and a few days of summer temperatures, we are going to get quite busy
for quite some time.
Here is the math (You can go
ahead and wrap your head in duct tape at anytime if you fear it might explode):
Each acre of vines at Amalie
Robert Estate is the equivalent of 5,808 lineal feet of canopy if we were to put
each row end to end. This is an exercise left for the reader, as we are not
going to go and do that for this illustration. And since we have about 35 acres
of vines that means we have about 203,280 lineal feet of canopy to manage. Now
that is kind of a big number, so let’s convert that to miles. How about 38.5
miles? That is about the average commute these days. That’s better, easier to
grasp. And besides, that duct tape was starting to get tight.
But we run wires on both sides of
the canopy to catch the shoots in the trellis. So, 38.5 miles of canopy
requires 77 miles of wires and enough hands to tuck each and every shoot into
its rightful place in the canopy. And then here is the kicker - we run three
sets of wires. So this is how 38.5 miles of canopy magically turns into 231
miles of wires to control and manage the canopy at Amalie Robert Estate. (We
really shudder at that thought.)
Right. While the duct tape is
still in place, let’s run the numbers for May. Then you can get cleaned up and
comb your hair back into place before anyone notices the swelling.
The month of May logged 224.3
degree days, with a high temperature of 90.1 and a low temperature of 36.3
degrees Fahrenheit. This brings the growing season to date total from April 1
through May 31 to 225.6 degree days.
The 2017 vintage marks a
significant shift to the cool side from the 2016 vintage where May recorded 277
degree days for a growing season to date total of 441.9 degree days. While the
data supports no conclusions as of yet, we may be witnessing a return to cool
climate viticulture circa 2005 and 2007. If only…
We have had plenty of liquid
sunshine so far this year, and the month of May added another 1.23 inches.
That’s nice and also very good for the new vines to help establish their root
systems. And the cover crop is just growing like the little weeds they are! On
the other hand, Ernie has been watching the grass grow out of control. As the
sole tractor driver, he also gets to cut the grass. He always remarks on how
much grass he has to mow in order to make wine. It just boggles his brain!
Kindest Regards,
Dena & Ernie
