We have a lot of new vines at our Maple Woods vineyard and we will finish tying them to the pencil rod and top wire and also remove any suckers. We have more fungicide to apply. Because of our high humidity right now, this is really important.
Finally, now is the time we need to perform our first harvest estimate. This very challenging job is done scientifically starting with identifying typical vines in each block, counting how many clusters each vine has, and then estimating the harvest weight for each vine. That will yield the total estimated harvest in each block. We add those numbers up to get an estimate of how many tons of grapes we’ll harvest. This number is, at best, an estimate because a lot can happen between now at late August when we start to harvest.
This task is very important because it helps us know about how much juice we will be getting. That tells us how much yeast and yeast nutrient to order. It also helps us plan tank space allocation.
