Ready for the new vines

The ground is now fully prepared for the third row of vines.  As with the other two rows I removed the top few inches of soil so I could cover with a layer of stones, but this time made the trench a bit wider so it will make mowing easier without damaging the vines.  While I was preparing the area I decided I would try squeezing in another couple of vines between the rows against the fence.  It is not ideal in that the sun will only get to one side of the vines, but they will at least be facing South.  This also gives me the chance to grow some Regent vines after all.

I have put in a layer of weed control fabric which should help reduce weeds between the vines while still allowing water to pass through to the soil below.  The rest of the stones will be added after the vines have been planted.

This view shows the ‘extra row’ against the fence where I will put in two Regent vines.

The vines are on their way!

I have just received confirmation that the vines have been dispatched, so all being well they should arrive in the next day or two and I can get them in the ground before Christmas.  I just hope there are no delays in the post being so close to Christmas, as I don’t think they would cope too well with being stuck in a sorting office for a week!

I was expecting them to arrive sometime in November, but with a later than average arrival of the first hard frost and subsequent cold weather it has taken the vines longer to go into dormancy, which is the best time to transplant them.

The new arrivals have been planted out

The new vines arrived the day after they were dispatched. Unfortunately it took me two days to find the ‘missed delivery’ card the postman put through our letterbox, as it had somehow managed to end up underneath my daughter’s buggy. I picked up the vines from the sorting office and got them straight into a large bucket of water to rehydrate them. The roots had dried out a little which is supposedly not good, so I’ll just have to wait and see if it has had any adverse effect.

The next morning I planted them out. This involved peeling back the weed suppressing fabric, then digging a hole large enough for the roots and deep enough to bury them about six inches. To help the root system develop I sprinkled some mycorrhizal fungi around the roots:

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I then back filled the hole, and replaced the fabric:

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Once all five vines had been planted I filled the trenches with 20mm gravel and watered them in well:

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The vineyard now consists of 11 vines:

3 x Solaris, 3 x Phoenix, 3 x Orion and 2 x Regent

Winter pruning and propagation

Each winter the vines will get pruned back to leave the right number of buds to produce the next season’s growth – and hopefully grapes.  I’m still a long way off this, and my current task is to create the structure on which the grapes will grow.  The first stage is to get one single stem to grow at least 6ft so that at the end of that season it can get bent down onto the lowest wire and become the first arm of this structure.  In the first year the vines have being putting most of their energy into producing roots, so didn’t get tall enough to make the grade, so, the only thing to do is cut them right back to two or three buds.  This year they should grow much more vigorously and by the end of the season will have reached the top pair of wires – fingers crossed.

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While I was pruning them back, I thought I’d have a go at trying to propagate some more vines.  I’ve no idea what I will do with them if it works as I don’t have room for any more vines, but it’s just an experiment to see if it works.  Maybe I’ll give them away as Christmas presents!  So having trimmed the cuttings into lengths containing three buds then pushing them into the ground, I will leave them alone now to see what happens.

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Spring has finally arrived

After what feels like the longest winter ever, and in fact the coldest March for 50 years (according to the Met Office), the weather has at last started to warm up.

The buds haven’t quite burst yet, but they are beginning to swell which means it won’t be long now. This is the time when the vines are most vunerable to frost damage, so I have covered them with shrub shelters again which I hope will protect them during those cold spring nights.  Last year the buds burst at the beginning of April so we’re about three weeks later this year, although I’m sure they will soon catch up and actually having a later start means a shorter time window for frost damage.

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Selecting the best shoots

The vines are now growing well thanks to a few weeks of warm weather.  I’m still aiming to get one single shoot on each vine to grow up nice and strong, and get to the top wire (about 6ft).  Each of the vines now have a few buds that are shooting and so it is time to select the best one (one that is growing well, in a good position and growing vertically upwards).  All others can be removed to allow all the vine’s energy to go into one shoot.

Here are a couple of pictures (before and after) of one of the Orion vines:

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They are not all at the same stage of growth and in fact there is quite a bit a variance between varieties.  The furthest ahead are probably the Phoenix and Solaris – but then that’s no real surprise since they have been in the ground a year longer than the others and so should already have established a good root system.

The slowest at the moment are the Regent, which are only just starting to show signs of budding.  The two pictures below are of a Phoenix and a Regent to show the comparison.  You have to look quite closely to see the buds breaking through on the Regent:

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Growing well

The vines are really growing well at the moment, and its looking like they will easily get to the height I need by the end of the season.  Even the new Orion vines are rocketing upwards.  In fact the growth is so vigourous I’m having to remove new buds and side shoots every few days.  It seems that as soon as my back is turned a new shoot has appeared.  The Regents are still growing very slowly though and are only a few inches tall – but this is better than nothing I suppose.

There’s not much else to do in the vineyard now until the end of the season apart from continuing to remove extra shoots, and when they reach the very top wires I will cut them at that point to let them continue putting any excess energy into root growth.

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20130622_1546An Orion vine with side shoot to be removed

20130622_1545A very slow growing Regent

Hot, hot, hot!

Only a few posts ago I mentioned that we had just had the coldest March in 50 years. Last week we had the hottest day in 7 years. In fact we appear to be in the middle of a heatwave which has so far lasted about 3 weeks and doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of cooling off. Up until a few days ago we hadn’t had any rain for a few weeks either, and unfortunately I hadn’t been watering the vines (I thought they were doing fine) and one of the Regents completely shrivelled up and died.20130723_2000
The other Regent is ok, well I say ok but is still only a few inches tall compared to the 5-6ft of the Orions planted at the same time. So I can’t work out if it was just a duff couple of vines or they don’t like the conditions. The first thing I did was give all the vines a good soaking! Then I decided I would just replace the dead one with one bought online from the RHS (so it must be good!) and see how that goes.20130723_2001
I wouldn’t normally plant until winter but I was keen to get something in the ground as soon as possible. It arrived within a week and looked very healthy, was a couple of feet tall and even had two bunches of grapes on. It seemed criminal to cut them off but I’m sure it’s the best thing for the vine not to be wasting any energy on fruit when it needs to be producing strong roots.
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The other vines are still doing really well – all but one have now reached the top wires, and a couple are over 7ft tall.

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The one that hasn’t reached the top is one of the Solaris vines, which has always been the weakest one, and seems to have become home to a few bugs. I’m not sure what they are but they have had a good munch as you can see.

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The Winery

With a potential crop in a year from now I thought it was about time to start work on creating the winery.  Making wine involves a lot of cleaning and sterilising so a winery wouldn’t be complete without a water supply.  So the first job was to dig a trench which in the UK should be a minimum of 750mm deep to prevent freezing, and put in a water pipe from the house to the where the winery will be. The concrete base could then be laid down.

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I did look into various ways in which to construct the winery and at one point was even considering a cob-house style building, but decided that might be a little tricky.  Bricks and mortar was another option but again, I thought I would struggle, not having very much building experience (well, none actually) so in the end opted for a simple wooden shed kit.  I ordered this online and when it arrived started putting it together.

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Once the shed was put up the final job was to give it a couple of coats of paint to protect it from the rain.  I decided on a light colour in the hope that it might help a little in keeping it cooler inside when it is sunny, and I plan to insulate the walls and roof with rockwool or polystyrene.

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Inside it now has sink with hot (warm) and cold running water. It just needs a few finishing touches and will soon be ready for some serious action.

 

Winemaking 2013

I wasn’t planning on making any wine this year – well, certainly not with my own grapes, but a very kind viewer of my blog contacted me and offered some of their grapes.  They had such a bumper crop this year in their garden that a lot of them would have ended up going to waste.  So I went round last week and they helped me to harvest about 15kg of red grapes (of unknown variety).  I had decided that I’d like to make 2 demijohns worth (about 10 litres) and the rule of thumb is that you get approximately 2 thirds of the weight of grapes in kg, in volume of juice in litres.  So to get 10 litres of juice I would need about 15kg of grapes.20131012_01

As soon as I got them home they were stripped off the stalks and then crushed.  I don’t have a crusher so opted for the good old fashioned approach of treading them (having given my feet a good wash beforehand!)20131012_02

The grapes tasted quite sour and I suspected they weren’t really ripe enough.  I’m not sure that waiting any longer to harvest would have helped as we’re so close to the end of the season.  I think the main problem is due to a combination of the British weather not being fantastic for ripening red grapes, and the fact that there were a huge number of bunches of grapes on just one vine.  It is better to have more vines with fewer grapes than fewer vines with more grapes. As grapes ripen the acidity reduces and the sugar content increases, and there is an optimal point at which the two are in the right area and so the grapes are ready for harvest. I am looking for a specific gravity (SG), and hence sugar content of around 1085 and a pH of about 3.5  Testing the SG of these grapes gave a reading of only 1062, which would give a wine of 8% alcohol and a pH of 2.9, so definitely under-ripe.

Adding sugar is the easy way to get around the low SG, so I added enough to bring it up to 1082 which should produce a wine of 11% alcohol.

The high acidity is a bit more tricky to deal with and can be lowered by adding calcium carbonate, but I’ve never tried this before so have decided not to at this stage  I have chosen a yeast (Gervin GV11) which supposedly has the potential of metabolising up to 30% acid, so it will be interesting to see if that helps in any way.  Although the must doesn’t taste too bad now, the problem with too much acidity is that all the sugar (which is good at masking sour tastes) ends up being converted to alcohol so you end up with a very sour tasting wine.

I’ll see how it turns out and work out what to do later if it really is too acidic.

So having crushed the grapes and added 0.5g potassium metabisulphite (to kill any wild yeasts and other bacteria) I left if for a day and then added the yeast and yeast nutrient.

I then stirred the must 2 or 3 times a day to oxygenate it and stir in the skins which end up being forced up to the top due to the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation. As soon as I think enough colour has been extracted from the skins I can put it through the press. Leaving it on the skins for longer increases tannin levels, but can also introduce bitterness from the pips.  As I already have a potentially acidic wine I’ll keep the skin contact fairly short, maybe a week, which means pressing tomorrow.

The following two pictures show the must fermenting away nicely before and after stirring, showing how the cap rises during fermentation.20131012_04

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