Hello and Welcome,
This
is the status of vine growth mid-May vintage 2021. The vines are a bit ahead of
themselves this year and we, as farmers, are following their lead. But we know
where they are headed, we have seen this movie before. Funny thing is, the
ending changes every time.
Wadenswil inflorescence in Amalie Robert block 10.
Do you see those bumpy looking things in the middle of that shoot? Those are
called inflorescence. If all
goes well and according to plan, they will become clusters of wine berries. In
this case Wadenswil wine berries, the best kind!
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…)
Inflorescence to flowers to wine berries.
Around mid-June they will flower and look like little golden pinecones. Come
the middle of August they will start to turn mauve one by one and in no
particular order that is apparent to humans. All of this precedes The Great
Cluster Pluck that typically starts in October, but that is yet to be
scheduled. We normally add 105 days to flowering to pencil in a harvest date -
but not always.
Now you may be wondering how many of these yet to be clusters it takes to make
one bottle of wine. We like the way you think! The simple answer is one ton of
wine berries will produce about 60 cases of FINISHED wine. NOTE: Finished wine
is the wine you have left over for bottling after sampling, laboratory
analysis, spillage and wine tasting from barrels - repeatedly.
Wine tasting from barrel at Amalie Robert.
While this answer is accurate, it is not very illuminating. By the miracle of The Completion Backwards Principle
(credit to The Tubes), we know that one 750 milliliter bottle of wine is
produced from 2.78 pounds of wine berries. And this lays bare the inherent flaw
in winemaking – we are mixing the US/Imperial and Metric system.
As most people who grow Pinot Noir will tell you, a typical cluster of Pinot
Noir weighs in at about a quarter pound (112 grams). So logically, you would
surmise that you need about 11 clusters of Pinot Noir to make a bottle of wine,
more or less.
As a domestic producer of Pinot Noir, we know that a single acre of land is
43,560 square feet. If that land yields about 2.5 tons of wine berries, which
is pretty close to the historical average for Willamette Valley Pinot Noir,
then we will produce about 150 cases of wine. The birds, deer and other
nefarious creatures help to maintain a natural ecological limit on wine
berry yields.
Now let’s drive home the point - 150 cases of wine from that one acre is
roughly 20,000 clusters (5,000 lbs. X 4 clusters per pound). But how many
clusters are we asking EACH VINE to produce? How many bottles of wine is that
per vine?
Clusters on one Amalie Robert Pinot Noir vine.
It depends on vine spacing. Right now the vines are not too concerned with any
of this. They are busy growing leaves to harvest sunlight. Leaves form their
solar array and that will provide energy to the vine and negative pressure to
the roots to extract soil moisture. And they are looking for a specific
spectral range of light from 400 to 700 nanometers. This spectral wave band is
what vines use in the process of photosynthesis. This is known as Photosynthetic Active Radiation,
abbreviated as PAR.
Typical Willamette Valley Oregon vine spacings for Pinot Noir using a Vertical
Shoot Positioned (VSP) trellis are often between 6 and 8 feet. Since most
vineyard sites are on hillsides with side slopes, much narrower spacing is not
sustainable due to tractor rollover potential.
7.5 foot row spacing of solar array at Amalie Robert.
To get the lineal feet per acre of solar array (trellis) for each spacing,
divide it into 43,560 square feet. For example, at our 7.5 foot row spacing, we
have a solar array that is 5,808 feet long. Just imagine the vines all planted
in a single row. The height of the canopy should then be 1:1 with the width of
the rows to maximize sunlight harvesting. Pro Tip: Unless you want lower
alcohol potential in the wine, then cut a shorter canopy.
4 foot spacing between vines at Amalie Robert.
Assuming a 4 foot spacing between the vines, we will have 1,452 vines in an
acre of land. That is our 5,808 lineal feet divided by a vine every 4 feet. And
each vine only has 30 square feet to work with which will help drive deep
roots. Using our historical Willamette Valley Pinot Noir yield average of 2.5
tons per acre, this means we will end up with about 3.44 pounds of Pinot Noir
clusters per vine. And at 4 clusters per pound, that works out to 14 clusters
per 4 foot of solar array.
The wider the row and/or vine spacing, the more clusters are required of each
vine. Here is another way to look at it – how many bottles are produced from a
single vine? Or maybe how many vines are represented in a single bottle?
That brings us to the final conundrum – how many glasses of wine are there in a
bottle of wine? This is an empirical evidence exercise best left to the
individual reader. However, we do recommend replicated trials in a controlled
environment. Hint: The answer is the same using milliliters or ounces.
Dena & Ernie
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