We harvested Frontenac today and now only have Steuben to harvest. The Steuben isn’t ready yet and we just have to wait for sugar and acid levels to reach our targets.
In the meantime, we will start some post-harvest maintenance tasks like cleaning up the vineyard sheds, making repairs to the trellis, and spraying fungicide. You might question spraying for fungus now that most of our grapes have been harvested. Fungi still want to make a home in our grape vines and we want to be sure few if any over-winter in the vines. So, our fungicide applications continue right up until we have our first killing frost.
We are frequently asked how the grape quality and quantity was considering how dry the growing season was. Grape and juice quality is probably the best we’ve ever had. Maybe the heat had an effect. We’ve also enjoyed a record harvest. By the time we finish harvesting the last grapes, we will probably have exceeded our previous record (last year) by 50%! The grapes themselves are smaller than in previous years and this is probably a result of the lack of water (we never turned our irrigation on). We can only imagine how much we would have harvested with normal rainfall. We are going to need to install some additional tanks for next year.
