Journal | August 14, 2020
Hardscrabble Journal
A Shabby Chic Vineyard
Conditions have reversed course from very dry to very wet. This is not what we want, but it is what we have. The vines are too happy. Because they have plenty of access to water in the soil, they are content to continue to grow more leaves and shoots rather than concentrate all their efforts on ripening their grapes.
This is reflected by a slow veraison, the turning of color and beginning of the ripening process. After a hot, dry July, an early and quick veraison was anticipated as the vines were shutting down their growth cycle. However a wet August reinvigorated growth and stalled the beginning of ripening. Based on the color change progression, we are about 7 to 10 days behind average. In sum, this gives a certain advantage to white wine grapes as a large, shady leaf canopy can provide more aromatics and freshness to the wines. Additionally, a later ripening can push harvest into the cooler weeks, which helps with maintaining good acidity and minerality.
It is the red wine grapes that we worry about. Ideally, we look for a fast and uniform color change. This is an indicator of uniform ripening, so critical with fine red winemaking. It is still early, but veraison is indeed taking its time. Fortunately, after all our reestablishing our Cabernet vineyards on more droughty, less water retentive soils, they seem in much better balance than the rest of the vineyard.
We can’t change the weather, but we can manage the vineyard in such a way to pull water out of the soil through increased biomass transpiration. The vineyard consists of not just vines, but also grass, cover crops and weeds. The ensemble of these plants and all their leaves is the biomass. The larger the biomass, the more transpiration, which is the water taken up by the roots and then “exhaled” in a vapor form by the leaves. So we let the vineyard go shabby. We restrain our desires for a visually manicured vineyard and let grass, weeds and vines grow in order to pump more water out of the soil. Think English garden vs. French. If things do dry out, then its back to manicuring. But for now, shabby is chic.
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Linden Vineyards / Learn More / Latest at Linden | Journal: August 14, 2020