New Chardonnay Vineyard Grafting

Friday morning, June 5th, I was up early to take some pictures of the vineyard before the grafting. The cool weather we have had resulted in good vine growth. The frost-damaged portion of the vineyard had recovered nicely so the whole vineyard could be grafted.

At 6:30 am sharp the grafting team pulled in to the vineyard. The four grafters started by sharpening the grafting knives. The knives look like a small version of a barber's razor and are just as sharp!

The grafting began with the first four rows in the northwest corner of the vineyard. There are 1130 vines in the vineyard and the whole vineyard was complete by 11:30 am (no breaks). That's slightly less than a minute a vine. I tried taking pictures of the grafting process. It was difficult because the hands moved very quickly.

The grafting steps are:

1.) Pull rootstock vine over and place

under your knee.

2.) Slice a bud or two from the bud wood and place buds in your mouth to keep them moist.

3.) Make a small incision at the base of rootstock for sap drainage.

4.)Make a downward slice in rootstock about 6 inches above base and cut sliced material off.

5.) Place bud on the slice.

6.) Secure graft with white tape.

7.) Cut leafy growth from

rootstock about 1 inch above graft.

8.)Move to next vine.

One vine a minute for 5 hours on your knees in the sun!

Grafting Update

The grafting we did in the former pinot noir vineyard is taking hold. The chardonnay buds that were grafted to the pinot stumps are starting to push out. I am giving the plants 6 hours of water today which should really make the new bud push out shoots over the next week.

Gopher Update

The last time I updated you on the Gopher War the headcount was 34 less gophers. I now have a new recruit in the anti-gopher army. Adrian, a hand I borrow from a neighboring vineyard has a real knack for gopher trapping, and much younger knees. The total now stand at 78 less gophers and 8 less moles. I have started keeping score of moles since they almost destroyed my front lawn. They don't harm the vineyard.

Grafting

The grafting team arrived at 6:30am today, Saturday May 18th. My 154 pinot vines and 200 pinot vines in a neighboring vineyard were to be grafted over to chardonnay.

Step one was to cut the shoot head off the vine. Then the gentleman doing the grafting peeled a little bark off the stump end, and made a small slit on either side of the trunk. Into each of the slits he slid a chardonnay bud and wrapped it with a white tape.

It took until 3:00 pm today to do all 354 vines.

Changing Over

We have begun the process of converting

 the 150 Pinot Noir vines at  the front of the property to

 Chardonnay. This was not a popular decision with all family members. When complete it will raise our  chardonnay production by 13% and give us a saleable quantity of fruit.

The first step in this process was to

 cut back the plants to a stump. All this year's growth was removed and hauled down to the burn pile. We will give the vines a few days to stop oozing sap before doing any more to them.

Saturday a budding crew will come in and graft new bud wood to the vine stumps. In about two weeks we should see new shoots of Chardonnay pushing out of what was a Pinot vine.

The clone we selected for grafting is Montrachet. The vineyard where we harvested the bud wood produces grapes for wines that consistently are getting tasting scores in the high 90's.

Life of a Farmer

The new vineyard was developing right on schedule until we were hit by a late season frost on April 29th. Temperature at the bottom of the hill fell to 30.6 degrees.

In the picture on the right you can see where the vegetation stops. On the left is a close up of a damaged rootstock.

This year's frost strategy was to rely on the 20" white grow tubes to protect our young vines. Earlier this spring before they started to push buds we pruned the vines back to about 8 inches of wood and put them in grow tubes.

The grow tube strategy was working. A vineyard check after the frost (31.6 degrees) on April 16th showed only a few leaves nipped by the frost. This frost was followed by warm weather and the vines really started to develop until the morning of the 29th when we saw a 30.6 degree frost.

My theory on why the tubes didn't protect the vines is: The shoot development in the tubes during the warm weather brought the shoots and leaves in contact with the sides of the tubes. The cold was transferred by contact and was sufficient to kill the primary bud push. The secondary buds are now starting to push. If we had turned on the frost protection system ( micro sprinklers), we probably would have raised temperatures by 1-1 1/2 degrees and damage would have been limited.

The bottom line is that about 1/3 of the vines will have retarded growth this year and may not be ready for grafting until the fall.

2007 Pinot Noir Bottling

Sunday August 31 st was the day chosen to bottle our 2007 Pinot Noir that was harvested last September. The wine had been in a new French oak barrel for nearly one year. We had a beautiful Sonoma day for bottling. When we arrived at the winemaker's house Marty had everything ready. In addition to Marty the bottling team was my wife Doris, Son-in-law Matt, Daughter Jenn and grandchildren Charlie and Caitlin.

The first step in the bottling process was to clean the bottles in a bath of water and sulfide, rinse and rack them to dry. While Matt, Doris and I did that Marty sterilized the tubing, pump, vat and bottling station.

When the 13 cases of bottles were cleaned, dried, and back in the cases it was time to open the barrel and taste! All the adults got a chance to taste before I put them back to work. The verdict was "this is good" with a note of surprise. The wine aging process is amazing. Doris and I had tasted the raw wine before it went into the barrel and the wine at that stage was crude, harsh and really undrinkable. What we had in our hands now was better than many we have tasted and it still has 6 months to a year of bottle aging before we will be serving the wine.

Marty pumped the wine into a vat (food grade garbage can) from which we would siphon the wine to the bottling station. Before bottling we added a little sulfide to the wine to preserve the wine.

My job was bottling operator, filling bottles at the three spigots. Doris was "Bottle QC", adjusting the wine level in the bottles. Matt being young and strong had the hard job of corking the bottles. Jenn took pictures and kept Charlie and Caitlin entertained.

The end result of our efforts was 12 cases and 8 bottles of wine. In the barter agreement I had made with Marty, the winemaker and the grower would split the completed wine. So we loaded six cases and eight bottles of wine into the car and drove home pleased with our efforts.

Having been a CFO in my working life, I am cost oriented so I began calculating the cost of my wine. I am not including the land cost or development cost of the vineyard in the calculation. Just looking at the cash outlays for the season.

Farming Cost $1200

Harvest Cost $517

Total cash out $1717 divided by 80 bottles = $21.46/bottle