We finished up harvest with our Sabrevois at Tassel Ridge Winery on Monday, September 19. Our photographer used his drone to capture some great harvest photos. We will have video to show you how it all looks from the air.
Last week, we harvested the Steuben, La Crescent, Marquette, Frontenac, and finished up the St. Croix.
So now, we will thoroughly clean the harvest equipment and will go through the vineyard replacing any posts that were broken during harvest. We will also fix any trellis sections that were damaged during harvest. We will be mowing EVERYWHERE. The recent rains have stimulated growth of the vineyard floor between the vines and now we have to “hit it” with mowing. And, we will continue with fungicide sprays. Just because we’ve finished harvest doesn’t mean that we can let down our guard about fungus. We certainly don’t want to put the vines to bed for the winter with fungus that will be that much harder to kill in the spring.
We will start driving posts for the vineyard expansions at Tassel Ridge Vineyard and also at Maple Woods Vineyard. We will be ready to plant Petite Pearl, Brianna, and St. Pepin when the rooted cuttings arrive in May 2017.
We were very disappointed in our harvest of Marquette this year. We thought we had a bumper crop but when we actually harvested, the grapes were shriveled and we ended up with just a fraction of what we expected. It may turn out that the juice from this fruit is outstanding, but it is too early to tell that at this point. So, we will launch an investigation of what happened from the time when we made our first estimates to when we harvested.
