2 Lads Winery Blog

Harvest from the vineyard's perspective.

As we start to get closer to harvest I often get asked, how does Cornel decide when to pick the grapes? Well, there’s a lot more involved in the decision than a magic date on the calendar or popping a couple grapes in your mouth and thinking they taste pretty good, so why not start now?

First off, it depends on the style of wine we are making. We bring in grapes for our sparkling wines before the rest of our wines. Earlier harvest of those grapes means that the sugars haven’t developed as much, and the acids are a bit more prevalent. We usually harvest grapes for our sparkling wines with the sugars at around 19-20˚Brix. The earlier harvest, with not-as-ripe fruit also means that we aren’t getting the phenolic compounds, and while we want some fruit aromatics, we also want some of the sparkling wine aromatics that come from the yeast (so we use a champagne yeast for these wines). Other styles of wine we choose to make might depend on the growing season. A warm year or a longer growing season will see riper fruit with higher ˚Brix which would allow us to make a bolder, heavier, richer wine if we chose to (especially a red wine). These wines are a little more reminiscent of a California style wine. A cooler year or a shorter growing season might have us leaning more towards a European style wine, with brighter acidity and fruit, and crisper mouth feel.

Variety of the grape will also determine when we harvest. The grapes in the vineyard all ripen at different states. Some varieties need longer time on the vine to develop and ripen. We also have different clones of the same variety, and some clones ripen sooner than others. After the grapes for the sparkling wines are brought in (some of the Pinot Grigio and sometimes some of the Chardonnay), then we start harvesting grapes for our still wines (those without bubbles). The first varieties that tend to ripen are our Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio. The Pinot Noir follows in batches along with the Riesling, while we might be bringing in the last of the Chardonnay. We bring in Cabernet Franc for our rosé as we’re wrapping up the Pinot Noir, and lastly, we bring in the Cabernet Franc and Merlot. Harvest isn’t a linear event. Varieties overlap, we bring in parts of the vineyard, while we leave others to ripen a little longer on the vine.

Then there are the grapes themselves, with quite a few factors involved there; pH, acid levels, physiological ripeness (tannins and phenolic compounds that add to color, flavor and aroma), seed development, and sugar levels. We’re not opposed to sampling the grapes either, to see how they taste. It’s a combination of all these factors that help determine when we get the crews out into the vineyard and start bringing the grapes in.

State of our Chardonnay?

Things are still ramping up here for the season. This little bit of heat has been good for the vines. Those 'Growing Degree Days' I mentioned in the last post, well we're currently ahead of 2009 (which was the year-without-a-summer) and are about even with 2008 as of today.

Budbreak occurred in our front block of Chardonnay around May 21st:

 

2 days later, it looks a little more like foliage:

 

We've got a few inches of growth now on the vines and small flower clusters are starting to form:

 

Cornel, Tim and Dawby are out in the vineyard doing a little shoot thinning and crop adjustment this week. It looks like its going to be a big crop this year. Overall, we're ok with how things are sitting right now in the vineyard.

The winery has had a little action lately too. We bottled up our 2010 Chardonnay yesterday. We ended up with 288 cases. I sampled some from the tank while they were bottling (one perk of the job!) and its going to be another great Chard. It has amazing tropical fruit aromatics, balanced acidity, and already a great mouthfeel. We'll release it over the 4th of July. Here's a quick video of the process:

   

2011 Spring in the vineyard

It’s been a cool spring up here on Old Mission Peninsula. We often get asked how that is affecting our vines. As you’ll soon come to learn about asking questions in the wine industry, a common answer is “It depends,” which holds true in this case. With so many different factors involved in making wine, there usually isn’t just one answer. In regard to this year, we are OK with the cool spring, mostly because there has still been a chance for frost. If the days are cool, you can expect that night temperatures will dip down toward frost in certain areas (especially low-lying spots). If we’d had just enough warmth this spring to get the vines growing, then fell back into this cooler weather, we’d risk losing the new growth to frost and then have to rely on secondary buds for our grapes, which isn’t ideal (they often aren’t as productive).

So how are the vines doing? I can answer that scientifically first (I promise not to get completely scientific!). We use a method in agriculture called Growing Degree Days (GDD). It’s a measure of heat accumulation that helps determine plant development. The number comes from adding the daytime high temperature to the daytime low, dividing by 2, then subtracting a base temperature (we use 50˚F). This method gets tweaked a little when the average temperature falls below the base temp.

GDD = ((Daytime High + Daytime Low)/2) - 50

That number gets added to all the days prior to that to create an accumulated GDD of the year so far. Here’s a cool Michigan State University driven website that tracks GDD on Old Mission Peninsula: Enviro-weather (MAWN)  

I’ve also compiled a chart to show the GDD of the last few years:

Year	GDD 3/1-5/3	Total GDD	Comments
2005	108	2695.6	One of the “best” years on record in N. Michigan
2006	152.1	2368.2
2007	97.3	2687.7	Had been 2nd to 2005 for quality
2008	118.7	2257.8	A pretty average Northern Michigan growing season
2009	76.2	1889.5	One of the coldest years we’ve had
2010	208.3	2607	Some argue this year was better than 2005
2011	47.9	?

Looking at the numbers to date (GDD of March 1^st through May 3^rd), this year looks a little scary, but those numbers can be a bit misleading. One warm day can increase that number by 20 or 25, and if we have a really warm summer, we can still catch up to a typical or warm year despite the cool spring we’ve had.

So I’ve presented you with data as an answer to the question of how the vines are doing. I also posed that question to Cornel, the winemaker, vineyard manager and one of the Lads here. His answer: He’s happy! We haven’t been hit with any frost this spring. The soil is starting to warm up, and there is plenty of moisture in it. He thinks we’ll have bud break by the end of next week (which would be just in time for Blossom Days).

So who’s right? Well… it depends.