Thursday, May 3, 2012

What's Up in the Vineyard?

Springtimewhich means Bud Break!

Looking West over the Satori vineyards 
toward the Santa Cruz Mountains 
and a tempestuous spring sky.
 Lots of rain in April (after a dry winter) and things 
are literally pushing and popping all over the vineyard.



In late February, you may remember, 
we removed and burned about 200,000 "canes" (last year's growth) 
from our nearly 10,000 estate vines.




 Then, in early April, all sorts of tiny buds 
started to erupt -- Bud Break! -- from the spurs
on the roughly-pruned vines.


While Buds Break Horse and Dog could care less.
Wonder (the wonder horse) fancies grass.
Easy prefers mining for gophers.





Adorah (Sandy) and T.  eyeball some new Merlot buds.




Looking toward the Winery 
from a quadrilateral-trained Merlot vine. 
Quadrilateral means four horizontal cordons
each with five or six spurs. 





Circle of Life.
  Ideally, each spur has two buds ... 
which become two shoots ... 
which become two cluster-carrying vines ... 
which, after harvest, become two canes





But grape vines are extraordinarily prolific
scoffing at the viticulturist's
  best-laid plans 
for an orderly
two buds per spur.
Someone has to come by
and pinch off these tiny interlopers
(over and over and over)
lest the vineyard become an over-grown chaos by June.





Buds appear everywhere
  on the trunk
on the undersides of cordons
and all over spurs.
T. likens the second pruning of vines
to painting the Golden Gate Bridge.
As soon as you finish one pass,
you go back and do it again ...
until the vines finally give in
and get down
to some serious 
two vines per spur grape production.





Young Merlot in training.
  Sometimes, for various reasons, you have to replace a vine,
like this one, which is being trained
to conform to its quadrilateral trellis.
Green tape signals the trainer/pruner
to proceed carefully when pinching buds
to avoid loss of a year's growth.





So here it is May 3.
  Buds have become shoots,
growing an inch or more each day.
The leaves on the shoots increase photosynthesis
giving the vine the energy to produce the coming fruit.
You can already see
tendrils reaching for trellis wires
and nascent clusters of grapes.
(More on this, soon, when we talk about flowering and setting.)








satori

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