Journal | July 12, 2022
These are Hardscrabble Chardonnay vines planted in 1985. Crop thinning not only concentrates the wine, but also keeps the vine healthy so that it can thrive in its old age.
After thinning.
Big Vines, Big Clusters, Big Crop
Well-timed rains and lots of sun have brought abundance to the vineyard. The vines require extra hedging and trimming as shoot growth is exuberant. Cluster size is much larger than typical due to good weather conditions during flowering and pollination. The potential crop is large. Too large. These yields would produce thin, uninteresting wines as the vines would struggle to sufficiently ripen the grapes.
Now is the time to thin the crop. Over the past six or seven weeks the grape berries have been growing quickly by cell division. They are now in what is known as lag phase. Cell division stops and they are preparing for the ripening phase which will begin in a few weeks. If we were to remove clusters before lag phase the remaining berries would compensate by growing even larger. This would negate the goal of crop reduction and result in even tighter clusters. Tight clusters with big berries pushing against each other increases the chance of bunch rot should we have a rainy harvest.
Cluster thinning is delicately done by hand using narrow-tipped picking shears. There are no formulas as to how many clusters to take off or to leave. We’ve been doing this for decades. Sight and gut feel drive decisions. We are often asked if it is emotionally difficult to drop so many clusters. The opposite is true. There is a sense of relief. The vines look so much better when properly thinned. They are back in balance. And we are very optimistic about vintage 2022.
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Linden Vineyards / Learn More / Latest at Linden | Journal: July 12, 2022