From Our Vineyard

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

Our big objective this week is to remove suckers from the vines at Newport Lane Vineyard. The suckers form on vines that are vigorous, usually because the soil is fertile and well-draining. They either grow directly out of the trunk just above the ground or they emerge

Grapevines are fungus magnets! Powdery mildew, bunch rot, black rot, and numerous other fungi are out there all the time looking for a home. Our job in the vineyard is to make sure that our vines are not hospitable environments for fungus to grow. So, we spray

We have experienced hot weather in the 80–90°F range for more than two weeks now. The vines have quickly moved through flowering to fruit set. We are working quickly to get fungicide sprayed and also to start hedging our Marquette. Our Marquette is trellised with a vertical

Hot weather has told the grape vines that it is time to bloom. Don’t feel bad if you can’t picture what a grape blossom looks like because you probably would have a hard time recognizing a grape flower even if it was pointed out to you. The

We are planting 1,288 new vines this year and the planting process started this week. We purchase our new vines as rooted cuttings that consist of a root ball and about twelve inches of trunk. We will dig a hole in the ground, put the root ball

With the exception of about three hours of pruning in our new Brianna block at Tassel Ridge, we are DONE with pruning for this season! We all know it’s important but it gets to be a very long, tedious task. One half of our crew will be

We have four grape varieties to finish pruning at Tassel Ridge, Meadowcreek, and Maple Woods vineyards and we prune when the weather permits. Broken posts and unwanted mulberry trees at Meadowcreek will be much easier to work on while the soil is soft and wet and we’ll