Checking the brix

Veraison

A few days before August 2nd Doc noticed the Veraison time was upon us. It was more apparent in the Sumerset seedless grapes. They are the only eating grape that we have planted . But we are also starting to see veraison on the wine grapes as well. Veraison is the time when the grapes are starting to turn from green to Red or in this case to a Salmon color. He has also been busy with the necessary hook-ups to be made for the newly purchase of a the bladder press and crusher/destemmer.

Hedging

Last weekend we hedged the grape vines . What that consist of is opening up the canopy so that the grapes ripen. We had talked to other vineyard owners who said that they used a gas hedging tool to establish this. The thought of that made us kind of nervous. I am sure with more experience and of course trial and error, we will get better at that. So we just used our pruners and cut off the long hanging down vines and opened the canopy so the cluster could soak up the sun.

Going forward

This weekend Terry and I cleared some trees so we can have room for a pole shed to house our equipment. Terry of course operated the chain saw with ease of a twenty year old. I filled the wagon with the tree limbs and piled wood for a fire this fall. I am looking forward to sitting around a fire, sipping a glass of wine. We had debated the placement of this building for a couple months. Finally we decided on the flattest land that we have next to the lower vineyard. While cleaning up the debris I could not help but feel a little sad for view that was changing. I know it was just a rickety gate, but still. I had mentioned my feeling to Terry and he reminded me this was just the view from the driveway. I would get over it. So we go forward. Soon the the building will be up. It will be nice to have room for the sprayers, carts, wagon, tillers, weedwackers, and eventually a tractor. So here is the photo from last fall of the view from the driveway. Goodbye old gate!

How much is out there?

How cool is it watching our grapes growing bigger every day! Terry has been right on with the spraying schedule. This morning he spray for the second time, for the dreaded phylloxera. A disease that almost wiped out all the grapes in Europe in the 1800's. But the grapes we grow are reasonably resistant to that disease. But is still needs to be monitored. We are now starting to concentrate on making a list of the equipment we will need to start the wine making process. But how much equipment, for how much wine? First we will try to estimate out how many bottles of wine are in the upper field. Here is a rough average to work with. One pound of grapes equals 4.5 clusters. One cluster equals 40 to 60 grapes. One bottle equals 2.75 pounds of grapes, or 11 clusters or 440-660 grapes. From what we are reading, most vineyards get between 2 to 3.5 tons per acre. But not this vineyard, this year. We have just left a small amount of grapes just to play with the wine making process. This evening we will go out and take a rough count of our clusters.

4th of July 2009

Due to numerous request's I have decided to do some updating to our blog. The 4th of July is here, we are now marveling at the new look of the July vineyard. It has been a long spring of spraying, weeding, spraying, tappening, and did I mention weeding. This weekend both vineyards looked presentable. We gave several tours to family and friends that we do not see enough of, and that we had the pleasure of their company. This photo is what the tiny Frontenac Gris look like. I will try to post photos going forward watching them grow.

Pruning 101

This weekend we stated to prune our grapes. The top field we finished in about 3 hours. Not too bad for newbies. I just hope we did it right. We had bought a pruning video from an established vineyard owner who had made a video on the task of pruning. We are still trying to view the entire video program. (defective DVD) But we are confident that we did everything correctly so far. From what we learned at the conference in WI Dells in January, it is tough to kill grapes once they are established. We did leave (hopefully) some vines that Terry can get a crop off of this fall. He is anxious to experiment with the wine making part of this new founded life we jumped into. The Marquette vines were easy to prune. They were just planted last year so all we can do there it pick the best looking trunk, trim the shoots, and trim off the suckers. The Frontenac, Frontenac Gris, and LaCrescent was different. Most of them already had a nice trunk and the 2 main vines coming off the trunk. We still have 4 rows of the Marqeuttes to prune but we have a few months to get that done. Remember the 'R' rule states that prunning can be done in any month with an R. The snow is still deep in there so, it was good for us to move our bodies, and get some excersise. That is what this was all about.

Tax Time

We woke late this morning to a balmy morning in the mid twenties. The sun was already up and was filtering through clouds to give the effect of a misty romantic January morning above the upper vineyard. I couldn't help to think about when, we would be venturing out with our light jackets and start prunning vines. (How cool is that!) But we still have plenty of time for that. According to a gardening law I heard years ago, trimming can be done in any month with and 'R'. Not really sure who wrote this law, or if its just something I heard an old gardener say! But still, we know that we will start prunning within a couple months or so. More about prunning later. I started our tax returns this week. I was reminded of it while trying to find my keyboard amidst a plethora of sales slips. We were told ,when starting a vineyard, you need to keep all your slips to use as a write-off. But what few bother to tell you is, that you cannot use your expenses until you get an income from you fields. So the slips for the wire, post, plants, and equipment ect., will lay and collect dust for about 5 years. Don't loose them, keep them in order, and remember most of all, remember where you put them! I keep mine in gallon freezer zip lock bags with a double zipper. On the label, I put the year of the expense. A bit of over kill there but, they are safe from what ever the global warming throws at us. While I am doing taxes and updating a blog, Terry is still hard at work in the basement. Last weekend he finished the texturing of the walls in the lab. Now he is working on the floor. It was just a plain cement floor. So he used one of those kits with the paint and the multi colored sprinkes. Also, he is putting a counter top together, and will build a cabinet to go under that. It is all coming along nicely!

WINTER PROJECT

While the two of us sit in our very toasty home, occasionally look out the windows and wonder if our vines are as hardy as we were told. While our outdoors thermometer was reading only a minus 12 degrees, the surrounding communities had a whopping minus 21 degree's. What may be to our advantage is that we on top of a ridge, that some how keeps us a tad warmer. We will see come spring, just how hardy our vines really are. In the mean time, Terry is very busy with his basement project of building a wine cellar and a place to make our own wine. The big plan is to let four or five plants of each variety, produce fruit so he can start experimenting on wine from our grapes. The wine cellar room has turned out very nicely. Now comes the room with a sink and the room to hold the containers for fermentation, store the carboys, and finally the the bottling. Most items for the remodeling are coming from the local hardware store which boast of being the "savings place". Hmm. But anyway, I have the easy part of just keeping up the blog, Terry is doing the actual work in the basement. Nice job Doc, looks nice so far!

Rainbow over the upper field

We seem to spend a lot of time in the vineyard but, that is what the plan was all about. This photo was taken 15 months after it was planted.

What an adventure!

Gavel Ridge Vineyard came to be due to the desire to be active outside, for a small income during retirement, and adventure. We toured our first vineyard that fall of 2006. That was the vineyard owned by Allen and Judy Olson, at Wild Mt Vineyard in Taylor Falls, MN. After that tour and some dreaming and planning we decided to go for it.
We planted the first field in the spring of 2007. With a purchase of approx. 400 sticks or cutting from Frontenac, Frontenac Gris, and LaCresent grape vines from Allen and Judy. This is a very economic way of starting out. Sticks run us around 75 cents a piece. Compared to 5 or 6 dollars for a rooted plant. We were half way through planting the first row and I told Terry that I would not make it, but, I did and we planted all the sticks in one day. We then went out and put in the grow tubes over each stick. A week later our son-in-law Eric and daughter Wendy and their son Blake came out and set in place 107 post for the trellising. I remember it was extremely hot on June 9th and 10th that year when we were installing the wires for the trellising. But we got it done. Now I am starting to wonder if this is this hard, how am I going to do this during retirement! We are surely crazy people. That summer Terry tilled those 9 rows with the aid of a very small tiller from Farm and Fleet. He was is good shape by the end of summer. Now we start hearing very good things about the future of a grape called Marquette. So, here we go again. this time however we order and buy the rooted plants. This we a bigger expense this time. Planting of the 2nd field took much longer. We dug a hole, put in the plant, put on water and finished adding the dirt. This summer we decided to get another hand tiller. Now the 2 of us were tilling. These were very dainty and grew at a much slower rate then the first field.