From Our Vineyard

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as we picked the last grapes on Thursday morning. The grape variety was Frontenac and both the quality and quantity was outstanding. On Friday we processed the grapes and started to clean things up. This week, we’ve cleaned the harvest equipment

After allowing for rain, we harvest almost every day right now. Most of our grape varieties are approaching ripeness, fortunately in a nice sequence. We received a load of Petite Pearl from a grower on Sunday, harvested Sabrevois at Maple Woods and Steuben at Meadowcreek on Monday,

We had planned to harvest St. Pepin late last week but decided it was not ready. So, on Saturday, we harvested our LaCrosse and then on Sunday, started harvesting Marquette. Most of the Marquette was harvested on Sunday with the rest harvested on Monday. We hurried to

Beginning at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, our harvest crew of four people started harvesting Brianna at our Maple Woods Vineyard. They finished at about 10:45 and moved north to Newport Lane Vineyard. After harvesting Brianna at Newport Lane Vineyard, they moved the equipment over to Tassel Ridge

We are expecting a very good grape harvest this year. With only a week or so before we actually start to harvest, we keep an eye on the weather because we don’t want heavy rain, hail, or high winds. We also need to deter birds from harvesting

We are watching development of the grapes very carefully with a focus on Brianna, Edelweiss, and Marquette. We do a full pre-harvest test using a rigorous sampling procedure weekly complemented by random sampling and tasting. When we see the three varieties mentioned above getting ready for harvest,

After about two weeks of regular light rain, we have experienced two weeks of hot, dry weather. Fortunately, we have lots of ground moisture and only the newly planted vines will need additional water if the weather stays hot and dry. Our mature vines have root systems

The first question everyone asks at this time of year is this: How is the grape crop looking? Vines in all of our four vineyards have heavy fruit loads. In fact, I don’t remember a harvest that was looking this good by July 15. Keep in mind

The rain last week and again this week has created some short days and many tasks were not complete. The top priority is to complete the harvest estimate and then to thin leaves in our Marquette blocks. We will finish removing Mulberry trees at Newport Lane, start

We will start thinning leaves on Marquette vines at Meadowcreek Vineyards. We want the fruit to get some sun but the leaves are two and three deep in places so we will mount our Collard leaf thinning system on a tractor and get ready to start removing