From Our Vineyard

The first order of business this week involves removing the Edelweiss trunks in four rows at Tassel Ridge. These vines were originally planted in about 2007 and now are missing arms, are really mis-shapen, are dead, or have what appears to be diseased trunks. We are starting

We have blocs of one year-old Brianna, Crimson Pearl, and Petite Pearl at Tassel Ridge that are now almost up to the top wire. We tie them to the pencil rod to assure that their trunks grow straight. This is not just to make them look pretty

Warm weather has encouraged rapid growth in our vines. Most grape varieties have already set their fruit. We are removing suckers and tying up vines, applying fungicide and even a little herbicide under vines. We also start to remove leaves so that the fruit is exposed to

The warm temperatures we’ve been experiencing have promoted flowering of our vines. Forget right now about picking a bouquet of grapevine flowers. These flowers are REALLY small and not pretty. Only a grape vine loves them! Anyhow, each flower is almost 1/8 of an inch high and

We finished pruning last week and now one person is dedicated to mowing and another to spraying fungicide. The rest of our vineyard crew will work to get our Marquette tucked up into the catch wires and then we’ll work on removing suckers from the Edelweiss and

All of the vines in our vineyards are leafing out. Freeze alerts on Friday and Monday nights have our vineyard crew at attention because the tender leaves are subject to severe damage if the temperatures drop to 28°F. As of Monday, May 11, it is clear that

As of today, most vines have buds that have opened to the point that small leaves are evident. The warm air temperatures last week hastened that process. Now, we watch low temperatures like hawks. Any overnight temperature of 30°F or below is cause for concern. Pruning work

We have a lot of Edelweiss and Sabrevois at Tassel Ridge to prune this week but we are making great progress. We also will tie up the new vines at Tassel Ridge and also at Maple Woods. And, we will get the last of the vines at

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel with regards to pruning. We will short prune the Sabrevois at Tassel Ridge and machine prune the La Crescent at Meadowcreek this week. We also will  apply the lime-sulfur spray at Tassel Ridge and finish spraying

Our vineyard crew is making great progress with pruning. Some of our vineyards are best manually pruned while those at Tassel Ridge can be machine pruned. We will work on those vineyards this week. We will finish spraying the lime-sulfur treatment to trunks at Tassel Ridge and