I am highly enthusiastic about soil health, but how do you increase Soil Organic Matter (SOM) without triggering excessive vegetative growth and shading your grapes as well as potentially altering the juice chemistry? Anyone with advice or experience?
What does certification cost you in time and money? If it is a barrier, would you find a software that does data collection, recordkeeping, and filing for you useful? Scale of 1-10
Hello!
I’m in season one of growing grapes from rooted cuttings (Chambourcin, Vidal Blanc, Itasca, Catawba) and I’m located in middle TN. Thus far, pressure on the vines seems to be coming from Japanese beetles and possibly fungus, although some of the leaf discoloration may be from the heat/humidity combo. What are your best tried and true organic recommendations as far as a spray program? Just finished a second coating of Neem Max, but I’m not confident in its efficacy.
Another thing I’m curious about is irrigation. I’ve got drip lines established, but I’ve noticed several local vineyards don’t seem to have irrigation. Is it necessary? Only ask because I intend to expand the vineyard several acres next season.
Thanks for any advice!
VVA seems to be doing a winemaking course with Denise Gardener for its members. Was thinking about becoming a member anyway, and might take the plunge because of this course this month. Anyone else a member? https://www.virtualviticultureacademy.com/event/winemaking-fundamentals-from-fruit-through-fermentation-with-denise-gardner/
Last week I wrote about how Climate Change is impacting the global wine industry. This week I wanted to drill in a bit more on a specific style: champagne/sparkling and the impact the heat is causing now. This is part one of three.
What Heat Does to Acidity
Figured you guys might enjoy this article I wrote on what whole bunch and stem inclusion contributes to a wine.
A significant hail storm (significant in size of hail and duration of event) rolled through here last evening at the end of the heat wave. My small vineyard took a beating with many bunches showing bruised and punctured skin. Should I give up on the hope of harvesting for this year or sulphur the bunches to try to save what’s still good? Harvest wouldn’t be for another 8 weeks. Will the damaged grapes rot and invite disease/insects. I have about 100 vines. My neighbours are commercial wineries and I feel really bad for them.
My family has a small hobby one acre vineyard in the Great Lakes region. We are on year 5 of these vines and are experiencing random vines wilting and drying up after successfully budding. We have had a cooler spring/summer than normal and haven’t found any disease, but we also aren’t super well versed in grapevine diseases. It just seems odd that it’s random vines in a row instead of affecting an entire row or variety? We’ve never had issues before and we also had a successful harvest last year (small batch).
If anyone has any insight or has experienced something similar please let me know! We’re wondering if it’s weather related and some vines weren’t as strong, or if it could be from harvesting grapes too early last year and the vines didn’t have enough reserves for this season?
Is he right? For so long, I've been told you decant young, bold wines to pull out their secondary (oak) flavors, and old wines to reduce sediment.
He also told me Americans over sanitize surfaces, and it's not like you're cutting raw meat on these white cloth covered tables.
The same climate system is destroying traditional wine regions and opening new ones simultaneously. Bordeaux hit 46°C during flowering last weekend, which causes coulure and cell death in vines at the worst possible moment in the growing season.
At the same time, Kari Koskela at Kotola Vineyard in South
Karelia is growing cold-hardy hybrids (Marquette, La Crescent, St. Pepin) at 61 degrees north, varieties developed at the University of Minnesota specifically for sub-zero climates.
Happy to go deep on any of this in the comments, vine biology, variety shifts, the breeding programs, what England and Scandinavia look like in 20 years.
Full piece here if anyone wants the detail:
https://solera.vin/blog/climate-wine-map-redrawn-2026
I decided to jump in and got 3 plants and planted them in a row planned for expansion. All Catawba grapes, 8 ft apart and 8 ft row spacing. Neither here nor there.
I need to sling up a trellis but posts are a ton of work and my ground is rooty and rocky still. I have t stakes and a driver already and I’m wondering if I could put up a t stake trellis and replace it with posts later if this works out, or could t stakes even be used permanently?
Are there attachments made for t stakes to spread wire for two-wire trellises, etc? I’ve only used them for fence wire before and those plastic adapters wouldn’t work at all. I could attach wire manually with wire twisted ties but spanning two top wires I don’t have a good answer for without something like unistrut which would be janky.
This was a leader I was hoping to stake up but now has galls at the tip.
I work on a small vineyard in North Central Victoria (AUS) and we’re currently pruning. I’ve noticed a fair few of our vines have this weird goopy stuff coming out of them, in the places where canes were pruned in the years prior. The photo attached is the largest I’ve found (on a Nebbiolo), but I’ve seen smaller deposits on our Chardonnay as well, and I’m assuming the rest of the varieties will also have some. I’m assuming it’s sap that’s congealed somehow, but when I showed it to a Viticulturist he had no idea and said he’d never seen it before.
Was hoping someone out there could shine some light on it :)
Cheers
We just bought a house in North Carolina that has these grapes growing. Any idea what they are?
I’m trying to figure out what variety of grape this is.
Is it possible to identify it by looking at the leaf?
Anyone knows what it could be?
This grape vine was already thriving when I moved into my house in Netherlands. Made some wine with it. I’m getting a hint that it’s some form of Sangiovese. Not sure though.
In Austria we grafted Zweigelt to Pinot Noir at the Feldtheorie Winery and Grüner Veltliner to Chenin Blanc for my winery (Kapitel Zwei Wine) . Prior to the grafting we have to brush off the old bark on a 10cm area to prepare for the cutting. It’s hard work in 30C heat. We will graft about 400 of each and while we don’t have a harvest this year, next year it should be normal harvest. In the video you can see the grafting of the bud on the existing 30 year old vine.