From Our Vineyard

Relatively cool summer weather is causing the grapes to ripen very slowly this year. Brianna is usually our first grape to harvest and it is still very sour. We are thinking now that we may not start harvest until the last week of August at the earliest.

The vineyard crew are cleaning Macrobins into which we will harvest the grapes. They are also cleaning the harvester which has now been fixed and is otherwise ready for harvest. We are having the local Deere dealer work on the tractor that will haul the cart containing

We are regularly asked how our grapevines are dealing with the very hot weather we’ve had recently. The short answer is “quite well.” Actually, most plants will handle air temperatures up to about 95°F but above 95°F, they begin to shut down and stop photosynthesis. In some

The vineyard team will start making harvest estimates for 2024. Because Tassel Ridge won’t need as many grapes this year, we will be trying to sell them to other wineries. The harvest estimate is a lot of work because it involves counting grapes in a few sample

This week, the vineyard crew pruned all 61 rows of Steuben vines and then shifted to tucking the Marquette. All of these vines are at Meadowcreek Vineyard. So, what is tucking? Most of our Marquette is trellised on a Vertical Shoot Positioning (VSP) trellis. That means that

The vineyard team took advantage of the good weather this week to plant 350 LaCrosse vines at the north end of the Maple Woods Vineyard. These vines are replacing La Crescent vines that were not doing well. The soil has a dry crust that is only about

We are now pruning ten rows of Edelweiss in Block A. These are 500 foot rows with 62 very unruly vines in each row. In addition to pruning, we are also removing suckers and tying the vines up to the trellis. Edelweiss is very vigorous and it

We finally got out into the Maple Woods vineyard on Wednesday to finish pruning LaCrosse and to prune St. Pepin. We are very careful about working in the vineyards when there is any possibility of a storm that might include lightning. The reason is that the wire

We finished pruning our Foch vines on Monday and then moved to Maple Woods to prune St. Pepin and LaCrosse. While we prune the vines, we remove the suckers and tie up the vines to the trellis. Our Steuben vines will come next…maybe early next week and

Between the rain drops, we are continuing with fine pruning (done manually) with Brianna, Edelweiss, Verona, and Itasca as priorities. We have lots of Edelweiss so this pruning is going to take some time. We remove the suckers that emerge from the base of the vine at