Hardscrabble Journal

What The Vines Tells Us

It has been many years since the vineyard has been this dry. The grass is browning, but the vines look good. Vines have deep roots and are still finding enough water in the subsoil. Still, vine shoot growth has slowed. When walking the vineyard one can see obvious differences in both soil water-holding capacity and vine age by observing shoot tips.

Older vines with deeper roots in clay-based soils still have very active shoot growth as seen on the shoot on the left.  Their shoot tips are still expanding, new leaves are expanding, and tendrils are reaching for the sky.

The shoot tips on younger vines on rocky granite soils have stopped growing as seen on the vine to the right. No more new leaves will grow and the tendrils have disappeared. Young vine roots are not yet deep enough to get to subsoil moisture and rocky granite soils don’t hold much water.

We can evaluate a vine’s water stress status by looking at the shoot tips. Most vines are only slightly stressed right now. Fortunately, we are just a few weeks away from the beginning of ripening (veraison). This is the time when we want the vines to stop their vegetative cycle and start to put their efforts into ripening the grapes rather than growing new leaves. This dry spell comes at a good time.

A lot of rain over the next few weeks could stimulate new growth, which would be detrimental to a fast and even ripening. A little rain would help refresh the vines to keep them from getting too stressed. No rain would be good for older vines, but could put too much stress on young vines.

• Subscribe to Linden Updates for the latest vineyard and cellar information.

Linden Vineyards / Learn More / Latest at Linden | Journal: July 22, 2021