It has been a tough year to be a grape farmer in the Okanagan and the SHV vineyard has been faced with its fair share of challenges.  To start with, the cold, harsh winter of 2008-09 left the vineyard with an abnormally low amount of fruiting buds on the vines.  A cool spring brought a slow budburst and provided the cutworms with more than ample time to inflict a bit of extra damage.

Now, with veraison finished, we have inflicted a bit of our own reduction in our crop yields by going through the vineyards and green thinning the fruit.  (For anyone unfamiliar with the term green thinning, it simply means if the fruit has not completely colored up by the end of veraison, it is cut from the vine and dropped to the ground).  This “tough love” is essential to ensuring that the remaining fruit is receiving all of the energy of the vine thus making sure that we have only the best fruit that can produced.

Dropped Pinot Noir fruit during green thinning.

The next part of the battle that we are currently facing involves Mother Nature’s beasts.  The remaining fruit in the vineyard is subject to attacks from wasps, birds and any deer that may have found a way into the vineyard (God forbid if she lets a Bear into the vineyard).  The answer to these attacks involves spreading nets over the entire vineyard and placing 100’s of wasp traps throughout the vineyard.

  

Wasps feasting on ripening grapes.

Wasp traps baited with sweet, sticky pop.

Rod netting the SHV Vineyard.

Sheldon spreading the nets.

Larry making sure the nets are just right.

With traps and nets now in place, all that is left to do is get the crush pad equipment set up and wait for the first grapes to reach their peak of ripeness.  I am thinking that vintage should begin in less than 2 weeks from now.

“Men are like wine - some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.” — Pope John XXIII

Dwight

Mother Nature appears to have balanced out the slow start to the growing season with warmer than average temperatures in July.  Veraision started in our SH vineyard on the first week of August of last year and this year, we are seeing it starting on August 10th.  More or less, the vineyard is on schedule but if the summer continues with this warm weather trend, we could be harvesting several different varieties by the end of September! 

On another completely different note, our Virtual Wine Tastings have been steadily growing in popularity with each passing event.  This past weekend, over 100 participant had the opportunity to taste and tweet from VinoCanp (twitter name @vinocampvan) in Vancouver http://vinocamp.com

If you missed it, watch for more info about the next tasting date here on the blog or follow us on Twitter  @StagsHollow

Wine writers John Shreiner (twitter name @goodgrog) and Julianna Hayes (Twitter name @VineLiving) have been regulars at the last few tasting.  Julianna wrote a great article in the  Kelowna Courier newspaper about Virtual Tastings,  http://bcvineliving.wordpress.com  and based on the thoughts she shared in that article, I am sure she will continue to tasting with us in the future events.

“You have only so many bottles in your life, never drink a bad one.”
Len Evans

Dwight