Savoring Summer: Vineyard Prep For Harvest

Sum­mer brings intense heat to the vine­yard, demand­ing atten­tive­ness in these last few weeks pri­or to har­vest. Fol­low­ing the abun­dant win­ter rains of 2023, the vines are thriv­ing as grape berries begin to ​“size up” with the promise of rich, con­cen­trat­ed fla­vors. How­ev­er, along with this abun­dance comes a few chal­lenges that require care­ful farm­ing and preparation.

One result from the del­uge of win­ter rain in our vine­yard is the pro­lif­er­a­tion of weeds. The rain­wa­ter that nur­tured our vines all win­ter also pro­vid­ed fer­tile ground for weed growth. Organ­ic farm­ing is a prac­tice in col­lab­o­rat­ing with moth­er nature to nur­ture all that she offers while gen­tly mak­ing space for our crop to thrive. The weeds are mit­i­gat­ed with the age-old prac­tice of hand hoe­ing in hot weath­er along with organ­ic mildew pre­ven­tion sprays. I try to start ear­ly in the morn­ing to beat the heat!

On Ground­hog Day this year, Punx­sutawney Phil pre­dict­ed six more weeks of win­ter and he was cor­rect. The pro­longed win­ter led to a cool­er spring, which delayed the ripen­ing sea­son by approx­i­mate­ly two weeks. While this delay means we must exer­cise patience before the grapes reach their peak ripeness, the extra time grants us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to metic­u­lous­ly pre­pare for fruit thin­ning, a painstak­ing yet essen­tial task to main­tain the high qual­i­ty of our fruit and pro­mote good vine health.

Fruit thin­ning is an art­ful prac­tice that involves selec­tive­ly remov­ing excess grape clus­ters, allow­ing the vine to chan­nel its resources to the remain­ing fruit. By doing so, we enhance the qual­i­ty and con­cen­tra­tion of the grapes that remain, result­ing in more intense fla­vors and bet­ter-bal­anced wines. This atten­tion to detail ensures that every grape on the vine reach­es its full poten­tial and con­tributes to the pro­duc­tion of excep­tion­al wines. This is one of the most dif­fi­cult tasks in sum­mer; it breaks my heart to see all that beau­ti­ful fruit on the ground. Alle­vi­at­ing the vine from over­pro­duc­ing allows the plant to con­cen­trate on sup­ply­ing the remain­ing clus­ters with the utmost ener­gy for ripen­ing. And we’re already start­ing to see verai­son in the vine­yard this week (Shown low­er left).