Category: Vineyard 2014

The vines have been enjoying the last week or so of fine weather, and have started showing signs of coming out of their winter dormancy. The buds are swelling nicely, and it looks like it won’t be too long until they break.

Between now and roughly the end of May they are at their most vulnerable as a hard frost after bud break can wipe them out.

So this weekend I have wrapped them up with frost protection fleece. I’ll leave it on until it looks like there won’t be any more overnight frosts.

This post starts with a spot the difference competition.  The following two photos are taken from the same vine:

The first photo shows a perfect healthy bud, starting to grow well.  The second photo shows a bud not doing very much at all.  Why the difference?  The good bud is one of the ones that wasn’t covered by the frost protection fleece I mentioned in the previous post!

I can only guess that the fleece material has been rubbing against the buds in the wind and literally worn them away.  Or maybe they didn’t get enough free airflow around them.  I’m not sure, but have promptly removed the fleecing.  It might have been better to just cover the vines on the night I think there is going to be a frost and then remove it in the morning.  Clearly leaving it on permanently was not a good idea.

The good news is this only seems to have affected the 3 Solaris vines as they are the earliest variety, hence the first to get going. Hopefully they will recover this season, but if not at least I have the Phoenix and Orions (which are currently looking good) to give me some grapes.  I’m just not sure what to do now when there is a frost predicted – fleece or not?  Maybe it’s best just to risk it and leave off the fleece. I’ve not read of anyone else doing this, I just thought it was a good idea. Having done a little looking around on the internet, I found some interesting information on the WineSkills website, but no options that really seem viable. I’m not about to install fans or heaters in my garden!  I’ll decide what to do when it looks like we’re in for the next cold night…

Apart from the Solaris vines which still haven’t caught up from the damage they sustained earlier in the year, the vines are doing really well. Here is a photo looking down the row with the Phoenix on the left and the Orion on the right:

They are now in flower, and this is a particularly important time for them in terms of weather conditions. Wet weather during flowering can cause poor fruit set which leads to a low harvest. So it is great news that, without wishing to speak too soon, the weather here in the last few weeks has generally been very good. Lots of warm sunny days and not much rain.

I have allowed two bunches to grow on each shoot, and pinched out all side shoots below the grapes to give them as much air circulation as possible. The next photo gives a good impression of how many bunches of grapes I should end up with if all goes well. Eventually I’m hoping to get enough to make a demijohn (4.5 litres) of each variety but that won’t be until the vines have fully matured. The plan this year is to just combine them all into one ‘blend’ and hopefully get enough for a single demijohn. This certainly isn’t ideal as they all have slightly different ripening times, but it’s the best I can hope for at the moment.

Three years ago I started out on this project, and now, finally I am seeing the fruits of my labour. So here is an update on the different varieties:

Although there are only three bunches of grapes on the Solaris, they are doing really well, in fact they are the best, partly due to the fact that they are an early variety so are ahead by a few weeks, but also they had they best weather during fruit set, so most of the grapes got fertilised:

The Phoenix are also doing well, they are behind the Solaris but that’s as expected being a later variety.  Solaris are expected to be fully ripe sometime around the end of September, the Phoenix mid October and the Orion late October, so seeing the Solaris a few weeks ahead is no surprise. Fruit set on the Phoenix wasn’t quite so good as the Solaris, which I think may have been caused by the wet weather we had during the end of flowering. Most grapes are forming well, but there are quite a few small unfertilised berries:

The Orions have not done so well, there are quite a lot of unfertilised berries, which again I think was due to the wet weather during flowering.  They were a couple of weeks behind the Phoenix so had to endure the rain for longer:

Here is a close up of one the Orion bunches. You can see a lot of unfertilised berries:

Still, there is not much I can do to control the weather, so I just have to wait and see how they turn out. I have removed some of the leaves around the grapes to give good airflow which should help prevent mildew, and to let sunlight get to the grapes. In about 6 weeks or so from now I could be creating my first batch of wine! The difficulty will be deciding when to harvest. I won’t have enough grapes to make three different batches, so will have to harvest together and combine them into one, but when they all ripen at different times it will be tricky deciding on the best time.

So, how can you tell if grapes are ready for harvest or not? Well, you can taste them, or you can measure sugar and acidity levels.  The best way is probably a combination of the two.  As the grapes ripen, the acidity falls and the sugar level rises, until the two are at just the right point, and the grapes are ready for harvest. I have been measuring the sugar levels over the past few weeks using a refractometer:

A few drops of juice are placed on the prism (the blue bit) and when you look through the eyepiece a shadow indicates the reading.  Here is a view taken through the refractometer, showing a reading of 22.5º Brix or 1.094 SG.

This is a great piece of kit as not only does it give a quick guide to the sugar level, it does so using just a few drops of juice, and so doesn’t waste too many grapes. The recommendation is to take several grapes from different vines from different parts of the bunch to get an average, but I don’t really have enough grapes so I’ve just been picking a single grape at random.

Measuring acidity is a bit more tricky as it requires at least 5ml of juice, which isn’t a lot, but since you need about 10 grapes each time, I’ve not bothered to do this with the Phoenix or Orion to save as many grapes as possible for making wine.  As I only had a few bunches of Solaris I decided not to even bother using those for wine and just make a bit of juice, testing for sugar and acidity.

It tasted delicious. Very sweet. The final measurements were 1.094 SG and 1% TA.

SG is Specific Gravity and is the measure of density of the juice (where 1.000 is the density of water), which can be translated into amount of sugar in the juice, and therefore potential alcohol level of the finished wine. 1.094 is really high and gives a potential alcohol level of about 13%.

TA is the Total Acidity measured in %, with the ideal for white wine being somewhere between 0.6 and 0.9%, so 1% is too high.

I have also read of using the Brix:TA ratio as a guide to ripeness.  So in the case of the Solaris juice, the ratio is 22.5:1.  The ideal range for a table wine is 30:1 – 35:1.  Another sign that it is not quite perfect.  But as the grapes looked like they were about to go over-ripe (see picture below) I don’t think I could have waited any longer for the acidity to fall.

You can see some of the grapes turning brown. I left one bunch on the vine and only 3 days later they looked like this:

Quite a lot of the grapes were turning brown and starting to rot.  So it may just turn out that in the good old English climate the grapes will never really reach full ripness, and that it is just a case of waiting as long as possible, and picking before they go off!

I am now waiting for the Phoenix and Solaris to ripen, as they are next. The SG last measured 1.070 for the Phoenix and 1.075 for the Orion. I haven’t measured the TA as I don’t want to waste any grapes, I’m just going to hold off for as long as I dare.

Here is how the Phoenix are looking now.  They have changed colour from green to a yellowy colour and taste good, so they are well on their way to being ripe:

This morning I found a couple of blackbirds helping themselves to the grapes. This is obviously another sign that they are nearly ready!

I managed to find enough netting in the garden shed to cover both rows of remaining grapes. Hopefully this should keep the hungry birds away.