Veraison

veraison is well underway

Veraison started a little over two weekends ago in the proofing vineyard. the seyval is well underway, as it is our early grape. they are delicious! those boys can grow some lush seyval. the rest of the grapes are turning their colors, but taste of tannin and green peppers, so boy1 and i concentrate our attention to the seyval until ger shooes us out. the sevyal tastes tartly of apple and cinnamon. its a great treat to eat a grape berry you know is ripe and warm in the late morning sun. but we do this all in the name of developing a sense for when the grape is ripe, of course.


the weather is unseasonably cool and crisp, so much more like september than august. where are our dog days? ger is happy for both the cool weather and veraison, which signals the vines to STOP WITH THE VINE AND LEAF GROWING and concentrate on the fruit ripening. from here on out leaf canopy management should be easier. after we put up the netting last saturday (a whole other post) we woke up the next morning and culled the grape clusters. for a layperson like me, it looks wasteful. that's alot of grapes in that cart. we do add them to the compost, but culling is necessary. we want to concentrate on producing the best grape berries and so by cutting the third cluster (ger was at times, more aggressive) of every lateral shoot, the vine then concentrates on ripening the remaining clusters, producing a sweeter harvest. gerald is also pretty happy with the cool weather, which he says will slow the ripening and produce a more complex flavored grape.

wc pete returned back to washington this past week. the leaf canopy is still quaking from the heavy hand of his unmerciful rule. i'll post about the netting, next.

this weekend, we have begun testing the brix level of our grapes.