Amalie Robert Estate Climate Update: May 2019

Hello and Welcome, 

  

This is the Amalie Robert Estate Climate Update: May 2019. A FLOG Communication. 

  

May is the month the vines get busy and in turn the vineyard hands get busy with vine shoots and trellis wires. Miles and miles of vineyard trellis wires. In our vineyard construct, we run about 9 miles of trellis wires per acre. With each and every shoot perfectly tucked in by hand. That ought to hold ‘em till harvest.

Ernie spent most of April dodging raindrops and getting the vineyard floor turned, tilled and seeded for the summer with a cover crop mix of Buckwheat and Vetch – a timeless combination not unlike Pommard and Wadenswil.

     

                       

“Owners/winemakers Dena Drews and Ernie Pink have always marched to their own beat, opting to release their extensive range of wines after they have had some bottle age.” – Josh Raynolds, Vinous, June 2019

Now it is the vines’ turn to take the lead. With plenty of soil moisture and warm temperatures in early May, the vines took the advantage and played right into our viticultural plan. You see, while Ernie was out burning diesel, the vineyard crew was preparing for this very event. Their task in April was to count to 12, on about 50,000 vines.

Deep Dive - Vine Shoot Spacing

This is our “deep dive” into vine shoot spacing and the number 12. First, lets review the mental construct that precludes the number 12 and that is vineyard spacing. Yep, we are talking about vine density or vines per acre. The next time you look out into an open field try and visualize 43,560 square feet. That’s an acre. Or when the NFL comes back on, that football field is 1.32 acres including the endzones.

Or you could do it the Ernie way. He decided that the most optimal vine spacing on our dry farmed sedimentary Bellpine series soil would be 7.5 feet for the tractor row and a cozy 4 feet between each vine. That provides us with 1,452 vines per acre. Using farmer math, we can break that down like this.

First, we start with our acre of land, 43,560 square feet. Then we divide that by our tractor row spacing of 7.5 feet and that gets us to 5,808 lineal feet of vines per acre. Said another way, an acre is a strip of land that is 7.5 feet wide and 5,808 feet long. A quarter mile race track is 1,320 feet long, so a mile would be 5,280 feet. Ergo, we are 1.1 lineal miles per acre. That becomes important next month when we talk about a fully functioning canopy, aka our solar array.

So what we do is break up that 5,808 lineal feet into a vine at every 4 feet. Logically, 5,808 divided by 4 gives us the magic number of 1,452 vines per acre. There is a little more math left to go, so if you are starting to feel some swelling at your frontal lobe, this would be the right time to break out the duct tape and apply a few wraps.

As most of you have no doubt figured out, each vine has 30 square feet of soil to colonize. It has 2 feet each front and back and 3.75 feet side to side. The only variable is effective rooting depth. Ask Ernie about rootstock growth habits sometime. Or just wait until the August drought for the rootstock “deep dive”.

Right, back on point. The trellis system we adopted for our vineyard construct is called Vertical Shoot Positioned or VSP. And we employ a single Guyot, because he couldn’t find a date. Actually, that is a farming term we will get to soon, relatively speaking. When you train vines to grow into a trellis system, which you have to do each and every year as they seem to have the attention span of a gnat, you have to decide on cane pruning or cordon spur pruning.

In the last best place to grow Pinot Noir, we choose to cane prune. This means we take a (smart) shoot from last year that was successfully trained to grow into the trellis and wrap that on the fruiting wire which is conveniently located 30 inches above the vineyard floor oriented (not orientated) in a horizontal plane. This is so that the new shoots can be trained to grow vertically into the trellis system until they reach a total height of 90 inches at which point Ernie goes out and hedges their shoot tips off. That’s our canopy, it’s 60 inches tall starting at 30 inches off the vineyard floor and tops out at a solar radiation maximizing 90 inches. Assume 18 inches thick and for each 48 inch long, single Guyot that makes 51,840 cubic inches of canopy, or 30 cubic feet. That’s the same soil footprint at 1 foot deep. Hmmm…

We are going to bring it home now. When you wrap a cane onto the fruiting wire the cane is called a Guyot. In our vineyard construct we have 4 feet between each vine and choose to run a single unidirectional 4 foot Guyot, mostly. While it wasn’t obvious at first, Viognier does not like a single, unidirectional 4 foot Guyot. So we tried a double, bi-directional 2 foot Guyot, but not much better. How about a double, bi-directional 3 foot Guyot, happy now? Yes, I like that. Very good.

A cordon is what they typically use in the Napa-Sonoma Nebula. It’s as if someone put down a cane one year and forgot to prune it back the next. For those of you who don’t know, Cabernet Sauvignon is the galactic faux pas that was created when Sauvignon Blanc met Cabernet Franc in Bordeaux. It’s a different world in a galaxy far, far away.

On each Guyot, there are several buds that will push shoots that in turn will produce clusters of wine berries. From a wine quality point of view, we would like to have enough space between each cluster for good air flow and sun exposure. That means we are looking for about a 4 inch space between each shoot distributed equally along the 4 foot cane. We want 3 shoots per foot of cane times 4 feet of cane. Aha! That’s how we get to 12. So easy a winemaker can do it!

The vines could care less. Sometimes there are 6 or even 8 shoots per foot of cane. Sometimes a shoot will have a double shoot that grows right next to it. Imagine an aerial view of any interstate in the USA. Those cars are not equally distributed along the road. And then there is the guy in the far left lane doing one mile an hour over the posted speed limit. The spacing behind that car is short, and over time will come to reflect the temperament of the following drivers.

So, that is what the vineyard hands were doing in April. They were out there equally distributing 12 shoots along a 4 foot cane, about 50,000 times. And what about the epicormic buds? Yeah, we take those suckers off at the same time!

During the month of May we have the vines right where we want them, growing into the trellis wires! And they are getting some help from a team of specially trained vineyard workers. Now get this, since there were only 12 growing points and not 25 or 30, the shoots grow faster and that makes it much easier to catch them in the trellis wires.

Surface the boat! The deep dive exercise is concluded.

Farm Equipment

It wouldn’t be May without an appropriate tribute to farm equipment. “Hey, is that a new battery cable? Looking good!” Most every corner of the wine growing planet has produced some form of wine growing equipment. Some more useful and certainly more reliable than others. As Ernie has lamented frequently, all three of his tractors are of the Italian persuasion, oh joy.

The hedger is French and mounts on one of the Italian stallions. After 20 years, they have worked it out. The flail mower is made domestically, by an Irish founded company. The rototiller, which is as tough of an implement as you are likely to find, is German. Jawhol!

That leaves the vineyard sprayer, which comes from our good friends up north in Penticton, British Columbia, Cehnehdeh. You see up north, “a” is pronounced “eh”. Ernie had to buy a new sprayer a few years back. It was the same manufacturer and he just upgraded to the latest version. While this may sound kinda funny, farm equipment does evolve. Better components, larger tanks and more money.

“What the hell is a sprayer?” We hear you. Check out this vintage advert for sprayers in 1924. Some were designed for the horticulturists of the day to apply some sort of airborne mixture to a rose bush. The goal is for the ejecta (in a water vapor form) to land on the rose bush and prevent mildew or other nefarious insects from taking over.

While the modern-day implementation may have changed, the goal remains the same – to prevent mildew from growing on your bush.

The gentlemen of the day, however, appear more concerned with other, more pressing matters.

For roughly $25,000 CDN, you too can purchase a device that will apply an airborne mixture of sulfur and water to prevent mildew from growing on your horticultural bush or agricultural crop, such as wine berries. Water is simply the delivery vehicle to get the sulfur onto the vines. Much like French fries are a delivery vehicle for ketchup. And yes, sulfur is organic, but we are not so sure about the ketchup.

When you purchase a new piece of equipment, you are buying “time”. While there are “all kinds of time”, there never seems to be “enough time”. As in “productive time” without “down time”. “Over time” as equipment depreciates, it begins to offer the Master Farmer “some time” to reverse engineer its inner workings.

While Occam’s razor is a fine tool to be implemented in most situations, it is rarely applicable to farm equipment. Much better tools are hammers (in a range of sizes), the internet, telephony and electronic payment processing capability. And speaking of “buying time”, there is Next Day Air.

Farmers, while generally risk adverse people in their non-farming lives, are also somewhat impatient. As in “this needs to be done now before the rains or hail or birds arrive”. Hence the TLA (Three Letter Acronym) RFN which stands for “Right Farming Now”. Pick your pestilence, in any given agricultural endeavor at any point in the growing season, but especially harvest, and you will see the true metal of a Master Farmer shine through.

In Ernie’s case it was 24 hours from the problem detection point until returning to productive time. Pretty good, really. But the protocol is very simple. The first step is identifying you have a problem. That was the easiest step, as one side of the sprayer was spraying the vines and the other side was not. Ok, that’s a real and verified problem.

The second step is to determine why the problem is occurring. Since the valves on the sprayer are all electronically controlled, Ernie focused on tracing power through a variety of fuses, connections, switchboxes, relays and solenoids, most of which were not designed for easy access. It’s an Italian tractor pulling and providing the power to a Cehnehdiehn sprayer.

After consulting the owner’s manual, which was actually written in American English, performing a set of tests, and leaving 2 messages with the manufacturer, it was time for lunch. Lunch lasts just as long as it takes for all of the second step activities to gel into a plan of action. Then it is back on the phone to the manufacturer.

“Well, it could be …” Yes, of course it could, and I just saw a unicorn run by. After getting a matrix-like download on sprayer valves, and phone numbers for US based parts houses that might have inventory, Ernie was on it. But first a call to the closest parts house. “They are really busy right now. I can take a message and have them call you back.” Ernie left a detailed message with the part number he would most likely need. Two days later, there was a call back, “What can we help you with?” That’s just farmin’ great.

One of the advantages of newer equipment is that the parts have evolved and become easier to disassemble, if you have the newer tools that evolved alongside said parts. Hammers, however, are universal and percussive maintenance has stood the test of time. An hour later with everything disassembled, cleaned and reassembled in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendation, lo and behold, it still did not work!

  

Once the impossible is ruled out, only the improbable remains. After all the internals were verified, the only possible explanation was the motor that controlled the valve. Sure enough, it worked one out of three times. Looking back on it, that one time it did work was most likely sampling error. So, back to the list of parts houses in hopes the inventory supply chain had functioned as intended and correctly stocked the shelves with all the right parts in all the right places.

The most local parts house was still far too busy to take the call or return the call from the hour prior. At that point Ernie made a phone in Yakima, Washington, ring and spoke with Jonathon. It was 3:35 pm. ”Why yes, we have one of those. We have a bunch of them.” Ernie immediately thought about buying a spare and just as quickly forgot to do so.

Once the part was physically verified as actually being in stock, the financial transaction ensued. Credit card declined? How could this be? Run it again, same result. “Is this an American Express card? We don’t take that.” New card and we have success. 3:45 pm.

Yes, I do want Next Day Air, Ernie confirmed. After the $400 valve motor an extra $25 was gravy for next day delivery. “OK, UPS picks up at 4:00, we should make it.” Ernie fell silent as he heard the pitter patter of parts man fingers gently working their magic on the UPS shipping website. “Got it” came through at 3:52 pm. Now the hard part. Waiting to see if it actually arrives. Who remembers sending off box tops as a kid, only to grow old and unfulfilled?

Miracle of miracles occurred at 9:55 am the VERY NEXT morning when the most beautiful UPS truck on the whole planet backed down the driveway. “Here you go, have a nice day.” Ernie scurried back into the house and with surgical precision opened the box. It looked just like the valve motor he was trying to replace.

Down to the shop, a quick tap with the most appropriate hammer and the old valve motor was off and the new one was on. Now the moment of truth, would it work? Ernie wired it up, flipped the switch and just as sure as Shinola, it did. Throwback to the old Microsoft days in Europe, “We don’t ask for miracles; we depend on them!”

The Numbers

May started off on a tear with the first half of the month recording near record high temperatures. Mid-May transitioned to an influx of rain and cool temperatures. Were we seeing an ominous preview of harvest 2019? Then the end of the month came through with more moderate day and nighttime temperatures. Just ideal for capturing the new vine shoots in our single 4 foot Guyot Vertical Shoot Positioned trained trellis system - mostly.

May’s high temperature was 93.2 degrees recorded early in the month on the 10^th. The low temperature for the month was 34.3 degrees recorded on May 1^st. The diurnal shifts in the first half of the month were wider and produced a higher average temperature of 59.01 compared with the second half of the month at 57.97 degrees.

Degree Days for May were 295.3 with the first half of the month registering 161.0 and latter period 134.3 Degree Days. The growing season to-date Degree Days stand at 400.3 for 2019 compared with 392.3 Degree Days for 2018. While an 8 Degree Day difference is measurable, at this stage of the growing season it is statistically insignificant. Just don’t tell the vines, they are getting ready to flower.

Rainfall came mostly during the third week of the month, well before flowering, registering 1.53 inches, providing a full month total of 1.79 inches. While the data support no conclusions as of yet, Vintage 2019 is shaping up to be pretty farmin’ nice.

Kindest Regards,

Dena & Ernie