Vineyard september 2002 newsletter

It is harvest time and the vineyard is now open starting Friday, September 6.
Two years of spring frosts have created shortages of certain varieties of grapes throughout Michigan. All corners of the state are reporting various levels of crop damage. Although our concord style grapes will be in great demand this year, the french hybrid wine varieties did slightly better. Our Season is very short and we may close early so please check back frequently - or better yet, subscribe to our “Picking Updates” for e-mail notification.

Picking Tips ...
Small pruning shears are ideal for picking grapes. You may bring your own or we will provide grape knives along with bags. Our grape knives are for adult use only. Heavy dew on the grass will make rubber boots useful for morning picking.

Changes to our Mailing List.
Increases by the US Postal System have made it much more important that you subscribe to our on-line electronic newsletter, “Tales from the Farm.” We will continue to mail our the “Tattler” but will reduce our mailing list by removing people that do not return each year.

Our “Tales from the Farm” published monthly has much more information that can be printed than in this style of newsletter, and you will never be removed from the list unless you request it. With our monthly drawing you may also win a pair of candles.

In September we also send out our “Weekly Up-Dates”, there are only four of them and our “Up-Dates” subscribers can also win a bushel of grapes from a weekly drawing. All newsletters are FREE!

All you need to do is click here and subscribe to our newsletter.

Visit our on-line Candle Shop.
You may now purchase more than 70 types of candles, wax items or gift boxes and have them shipped directly to your house - ALL YEAR!
Visit us on line & see what we have available. Our website has expanded dramatically and we have been shipping candles to people all over the US.

We will not be able to have everything at our sales stand - so if you are coming out for grapes & honey, you may want to e-mail us a candle order & I will have it ready for you to pick up at our sales stand.

COMMODITY PRICES

U-Pick Grapes
1-19 lbs. .70/lb.
½ bu (20 lbs.) or more .55/lb.
5 bu (200 lbs.) or more .49/lb.
10 bu. (400 lbs.) or more .42/lb.

Red & White Blended Juice
$10.75/gallon
Single Variety Winemaking Juice:
Red & White wine - Most Varieties
5 gallon pails @ $50.00 ea.

(An average person can pick from
1 to 3 bu/hr - bring lots of friends)

1 1/2 bushel (60lb) makes 5 gal wine

Generic Winemaking Juice
Red & White wine blend

5 gallon pails @ $46.00 ea.

Call (810) 796-3253 in the evenings to order juice or
click her to order on-line

This year we are offering single variety juice and also generic red & white blend juice. Our white blend is a mix of seedless & white wine grapes and our red blend is a mix of red wine grapes and concord types. The red blend will make a very light red wine, for a true red you must pick the grapes and ferment on the skins for a few days.
Winemaking juice is sold in 5 gallon plastic pails with a plastic liner. (Pail exchange required) These pails are held in a freezer until you pick them up. This insures that you receive the highest quality juice that has not already started to ferment.
Please order your juice as soon as possible. Although we try to complete every order, we sometimes have a shortage of harvest help, bad weather or U-Pick customers pick them first. Substitutions may sometimes be necessary.

Large amounts of grapes are quite easy to pick. Most pickers (depending on variety) can pick from 1 to 2 or more bushels per hour. Bring your friends and get quantity discounts.

White Wine Notes ... I have had good luck the last few years with making a soft (or slightly sweetened) white wine with Cote Des Blancs yeast (available at the vineyard.) It doesn’t like to ferment very much past 12%. Adjust your juice sugar level for 12% alcohol & ferment with Cote Des Blancs yeast. 1 month later add 8 oz. sugar per gallon of wine, then crush and add 2 to 3 cambden tablets per gallon, let stabilize 6 months. Many people also add potassium sorbate at this time (1 gram per gallon). (Not foolproof, but often works)

New Research on Honey in Winemaking ... Cornell University in Geneva, New York, has just released new information on the use of honey in wine. The recent discovery that adding honey to apple juice helps retard browning led them to winemaking experiments. They found that adding ¼ to ¾ pounds of honey per gallon (or use instead of any sugar additions), helps clarify the wine, prevents browning and acts as a natural preservative. I used it in Cayuga & Vignoles wines. It helps a lot!

VISA - MASTERCARD WELCOME

Remember! Our season is very short - only 6 weekends - mark your calendars & visit us!

Directions to our Farm

Preventing Bird Damage

Birds are a problem every year at harvest time at our vineyard. There is no such thing as "planting a little extra for the birds." When the birds are in the vineyard feeding on the grapes they will peck every cluster making them undesireable to most people, and sometimes will cause 100% crop damage.

At our vineyard we use many tools to keep the birds away. The only thing that is 100% effective is bird netting, but it is expensive and labor intensive. We apply bird netting to only the most sensitive grapes. The nets are 17 feet wide by 400 feet long and are stored in rolls that are rolled over the top of the rows and pulled down over the sides of each row. When you pick grapes from a netted row you just lift the nets up over your head, removing a staple if necessary. They are definettly not to keep you out (I occasionally hear this.)

Alarms are also used to repel birds. We have two types of noisemaking devices at our farm. They are both designed to make the birds think about going over to our neighbors crops rather than ours.

We also use "Bird Scare Balloons" to make the birds uncomfortable. The birds think there are too many predators in the area & go elsewhere.

In some years we use a Repellant called "Rejexit" that is sprayed on some of the rows. This material smells like grape Kool-Aid and the birds do not like it, After a few pecks on the grapes they try to feed somewhere else. Allthough this material is so safe to people that it can be applied one day before harvest, I apply it about two weeks before we open and is long gone when we start to pick.

In summary, our bird protection program is to keep the most attractive grapes away from the birds with netting and use other devices to make it a very unpleasant environment for them to feed in. Some years it works quite good and other years are more challenging.

Here are some great articles from Sandra Silfven's Wine Website at the Detroit News:

A guide to the main grape varieties grown in Michigan

Want to learn more about winemaking as a career in Michigan? Take a look at this: Michigan State University's 2-year wine program is the first of its kind in the eastern U.S.

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I also found some very usefull articles on the Winemaker Magazine website. They are very applicable to winemaking at this time of the year:

How Sweet It Is: Chaptalization - Winemaker Magazine by Jeff Chorniak - Is your wine missing something in the mouth? Does it need more body? If so, it may be that your wine's alcohol level is too low -- and one way to correct that problem is to add some sugar to your must or juice before fermentation. The practice is called chaptalization, and from France to the United States and beyond, it's more common than you might think!

Malo-lactic fermentation and its impact on acidity for red wines? - Winemaker Magazine

Wine Makers Log Chart - Download this usefull chart from Winemaker Magazine to record winemaking information.

Measuring Residual Sugar: Techniques - Winemaker Magazine - by Daniel Pambianchi - Apr, 2002 - How to measure the residual sugar content of your wine.

Honey in a Glass - Brew Your Won Magazine - March, 2002 - by Joe O'Neal - How to make a batch of mead, a classic fermented beverage that's been around - and been enjoyed - for at least six thousand years. With simple recipes, step-by-step instructions and a guide to different kinds of honey, from clover to orange blossom and tupelo.

Winery Tours - Warner Vineyard in PawPaw, Michigan, Augusta Winery and Mt. Pleasant Winery in Augusta, Missouri.

Pat & I were very impressed with the wines from Warner Vineyards. As I write this I am sipping an award winning "Solera Cream Sherry". It is smooth and nutty tasting. Then we tried a "Michigan Cherry" which was heavier bodied than other Cherry wines and was almost like a red wine (we had it with speghetti).
Three generations have made sparkling, table and dessert wines at this Paw Paw winery, housed in a state-designated historical structure built in 1898. See the old world champagne-making process and then taste the wide range of wines and champagnes. Self-guided tours include a video and a view of the champagne aging caves. A great place to learn more about wines and how they are made. Click here for the rest of the story ......

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Augusta Winery, located in the scenic town of Augusta on the bluff overlooking the Missouri River Valley, is surrounded by vineyards which, since the 1800s, have been recognized for superior wine grapes. This was the first winery that we visited in Missouri and we brought many samples home from this winery. The town was founded in 1836 by Leonard Harold, one of Daniel Boone's followers to St. Charles County, and became settled by predominantly German homesteaders. The rest of the story ....

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Mount Pleasant Winery in August Missouri, is a very large winery that any tourist in the area will enjoy visiting. It is America's first designated wine district. Augusta was awarded this honor three years before Napa Valley (Napa Valley is number two). In order to label a wine as Augusta wine, 85% of the grapes used for production must have been grown within the boundaries of the Augusta wine district. Today, Mount Pleasant is the dominant grower of grapes in the Augusta Appellation with over 51,000 vines. Click here for more details .....

The continuous story of Cayuga Row 34 and how it behaves during this growing season.

Meet Cayuga Row 34 (or really the first vine in this row). This will be one of the vines that we will focus on this year, taking pictures of it all during the growing season. You will see it shortly after it is pruned (around Easter), when the buds are swelling and bursting in May, when it blooms in June, when the berries dramatically increase in size in July, when the berries color (although Cayuga is a white grape) in August, and you may be the one to harvest it in September!

Cayuga vine in mid-June

Same vine in late June

Vine is exploding in growth!

The grapes are now in bloom.
See the very tiny white petals.

Click on the tiny grape below for a
series of bloom pictures..

In late July this Cayuga vine and it's berry clusters are almost full size.

This Cayuga cluster is ready for harvest
Time for you to come pick it!

Click here for the rest of the story and to go to our more
in-depth study of 3 growing vines,
a Cayuga, Delaware & a DeChaunac