Our vineyard team planted all of the new Verona and Itasca vines last week and we got most of our vineyards sprayed with fungicide. We’ll try to finish spraying fungicide this week if the weather cooperates.
This week, we will plant about 1,000 Steuben vines which we will use to replace vines that have died over the past 2–3 years. Steuben is fragile in our climate and we experience a fairly high amount of death loss, especially in severe winters.
We will also work on La Crescent planted at Maple Woods. Some of these vines appear to be completely dead while others have dead trunks and cordons but they are sprouting new suckers supported by their robust root systems. We will train these suckers up to become new trunks. We won’t get any grapes from these vines until 2020 but at least we will save the vines.
We will use our Collard leaf thinner to remove leaves on our Marquette vines. These vines are very vigorous and without any attention on our part, they will grow three and four layers of leaves that form an air barrier around the grapes. That will lead to fungal infestations that will destroy the fruit. By removing the leaves on both sides of the fruiting zone, air will be able to move past the grapes reducing the likelihood that fungi will get started in these grapes.
