Hello and Welcome,
Willamette
Valley cherry blossoms, aka popcorn trees.
The
popcorn trees are blooming, and the bumble bees are tending to the trees and
the grape hyacinths. The swallows have returned from their southern vacation to
build nests and hatch their chicks. The last of the daffodils are making way
for the first tulip and iris sightings. Bud break on April 15th in the Pinot
Noir vines puts us on notice that in about 20 weeks they will be ready for The
Great Cluster Pluck – Vintage 2021, the Year of the Dijon Clones.
It’s Earth Day in the Willamette Valley, and don’t we know it!
Bumble bees are responsible for nearly 2/3's of US pollination.
A FLOG communication (Farming bLOG) by Dena
& Ernie from Amalie Robert Estate. Oregon Willamette Valley Chardonnay and
Pinot Noir. Have a look and see what we see on Instagram @AmalieRobert Estate. We are ramping up on FaceBook!
(If you don’t like us, we don’t wanna know…)
Welcome Vintage 2021! Good luck, you are going to need it!
In the vineyard business, bud break is the visual start to the vintage. Those
buds, they look oh so innocent and cute just waking up to the possibilities of
vintage 2021 - all 1.4 MILLION of them. Yeah, they look cute now, but give them
a few weeks and those buds will have produced 6-foot canes that will need
trellis catch wires and their first hedge. They grow up so fast…
So sure, go ahead and plant a tree this weekend, but if you are wading into
aquaculture that is a whole different matter. As you make your way through
life’s carnival, it is important to remember: Don’t pet the alligators.
And it’s our Anniversary! We established the vineyard at Amalie Robert Estate
on Earth Day at the turn of the century. When we found the vineyard, Mr.
Shingler had his Montmorency cherry orchard sitting on top of it. That was
1999, and 80 tons of cherries and 1,188 cherry trees later we are growing about
55,000 vines over 36 acres. They are viticulturally spaced at 4 feet apart.
Our little red wild cherry sporting popcorn blooms.
But there are three wild cherry trees we keep. One is a plump dark red cherry,
one is a Montmorency cherry, and one is a little red wild cherry with a pit
that makes up about 95% of the diameter. The latter of these three cherries are
mostly propagated and sold by dentists.
The last of the first 15,000 vines went in the newly prepared soil 22 years
ago. And while our communication has become more and more digital with E-mail
and Zoom and INSTANT text messaging, we still find time to speak to each other
face to face. Maybe even over a glass of wine. Remember those days? They are
coming back into fashion. Sometimes the old ways are still the best ways… just
as soon as we can get rid of these masks.
The numbers. We don’t have any climate data to share yet, that will be coming
at the end of April. What we do have is the roadmap for vintage 2021. Bud break
is the first major event and we were lucky to escape any frost damage from the
near freezing temperatures at the start of April. But every vineyard site is
different and low elevation sites without proper air drainage may not have
fared as well.
They say old cherry orchards make for good vineyards and frost damage is
exactly why – cherry trees bloom (flower) about the same time vines experience
bud break. Cherry trees are an indicator plant of where you could plant a
vineyard. Just imagine if Johnny was spreading cherry pits instead of
apple seeds... Oh man!
Cherry trees are an indicator plant for wine grapes.
If a cherry orchard has a history of frost damage when they bloom, there is a
very good chance that vines planted there will suffer frost damage during bud
break. And if those buds get frosted and die, that pretty much cancels the
vineyard growing season. Kinda like smoke taint, but at the beginning of the
growing season, not the end.
The next big event in the vineyard is bloom (flowering) which is what the
cherry trees are doing right now. The time from bud break to bloom is quite
variable and hard to predict. However, once we see bloom we are on autopilot.
For Pinot Noir in the Willamette Valley, the historical average is bloom plus
104 days equals harvest. Now harvest may change a few days either way depending
on Mother Nature, but no matter, Willamette still rhymes with Janet, damnit.
Kindest Regards,
Dena & Ernie
No comments:
Post a Comment