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.