Washington Winemaker

With the growing season off to a cold start, I’ve been thinking about how to grow the best grapes in a cool season. Cluster thinning and leaf pulling can help by maximizing sugar production, in a grape vine, and by making the most of the sugar it produces. Good canopy management will bring out the best in a vine under all conditions, but it doesn’t work magic. Without enough heat, grapes won’t ripen well, and you can’t do anything about the weather. Or can you?

Scaling up a greenhouse

Jeff Chorniak inspired me to grow grapes in my suburban backyard and he used a collapsible greenhouse to extend the growing season. By sheltering his Cabernet Franc in this way, he made early spring and late fall just a tad warmer, and that can make all the difference when you’re growing grapes in Toronto. I’ve never done that myself, but the possibility of a cooler than normal season has me thinking about it. I’ve also wondered if the concept could be applied to a vineyard, by using plastic sheeting the way gardeners use row covers.

Some Puget Sound growers are doing just that. I’m hearing that overnight low temperatures, inside a tented vineyard row, are as much as 10F (5.5C) warmer than neighboring untented rows. On a clear day, under bright sun, it can get up to 15F (8.3C) warmer. “As much as” and “up to” are always tip offs that typical performance will be less, and that’s probably true here. Still, every degree helps and this might be a good way to cope with a cooler than normal year.

As I said in my previous post on shipping homemade wine, one of my readers and I are experimenting by shipping our wines to each other. He shipped two bottles of tomato wine, and they arrived in great shape - no breaks, no leaks. I sent back two bottles of mead. I hope they arrive intact and that he likes them as much I like his. My tomato wine isn’t far enough along yet to compare with his, in fact the last time I checked it was pretty harsh.

Don’t ask, don’t tell?

Both of us had a similar experience when we shipped our wines. We packaged up the wine at home and presented the sealed box to a shipping clerk, who never asked what we were shipping. I made up my mind before hand that I wouldn’t lie, and if asked, I was ready to tell him that I was shipping some of my homemade wine to a friend. He was only interested in two things, however, my credit card and whether or not the value exceeded $100.

I did have to fill out and sign a “shipping order” form, which had a space for me to list the contents of the package and some other details. The clerk handed it to me and said he just needed my name, phone number, and signature. Its possible that a different clerk would have required an accounting of the package contents, but our experience is that they don’t care what’s in a plain, ordinary package.

I expect the package to arrive in about a week, and I’ll post an update when I hear about it.

Tags: nad

Do grape vines know what they’re doing?

Left to themselves, grapevines will push out more clusters of fruit than they can ripen well. Making wine from such grapes will be disappointing: not enough sugar, poor flavor, too much acid. The problem is that a given vine can only pull in a finite amount of nutrients through its roots, and only produce a finite amount of sugar in its leaves. Divide that finite amount by an increasing number of grape clusters, and each one will have less and less. At some point, “more” becomes “too much” and you’ll get a large crop of poor grapes that will never produce anything but poor wine.

Yes, and that’s the problem

Grape vines will do this because they’re not trying to make wine. All they want to do is produce something that animals find more appealing than a nearby twig or blade of grass, and they want to produce as much of it as possible. Ok, they’re not self aware, and therefore aren’t really trying to do anything, but we are. We’re trying to make wine, and the tendency of the vines to produce as many grapes as possible gets in the way of that. So, part of the reason we prune them is to reduce the yield down to something that will ripen well. Sometimes, even after pruning, the vine will push too many clusters, and that’s when we need to thin. Another approach would be to prune less aggressively than normal, then thin to keep the vine from overbearing.

A specific deadline

You can’t just lop off nearly ripe clusters of fruit in the fall and call that “cluster thinning.” To get the most benefit from this technique, you need to thin the clusters before the flowers open. Its probably true that there will be something to gain from a “better late than never” approach, but it won’t be much. Timing is critical here, so monitor your vines closely after bud break and make sure you thin before the flowers open.

And a fuzzy target

If you don’t like deadlines like that, then you’ll be happy to know that the idea of how much to thin is a lot more vague. I’m going to have to punt here and say that “it depends.” It depends on the varietal, your location, the year to year climate variability, and your own goals. You may be able to find advice, from other growers in your area or from books, about how many high quality clusters this or that varietal can produce in your area. In the end, though, nothing can substitute for experience with living vines in your vineyard. Get to know your vines by trying fewer clusters this year to see if that improves the quality, or advances ripening. Maybe try a few more clusters to see if that boosts yield without harming the wine. Knowledge like that is priceless and will help you make better wine from your own grapes.

Further reading

Cluster thinning is aimed at efficient use of sugar in the vine. My last article on canopy management was about leaf pulling, to promote efficient sugar production in the vine. These two goals are opposite sides of the same coin, so if you missed the first article, you might want to click here and check it out. To make sure you don’t miss future articles, subscribe to this blog. Its simple, its free, and you’ll see every article without having to check back manually.

I’m still learning about canopy management. I’ve gotten a lot out of Jeff Cox’s From Vines to Wines. It’s where I first read about cluster thinning, and I still refer back to it. What makes it a great book for the home winemaker who wants to grow his own grapes is that it covers both topics really well. The first part of the book covers the viticulture, from which vines to plant, site selection, pruning and training, and pest management right through harvest. The second part picks up right where the first part left off and talks your through making wine from the grapes you just harvested. From primary to finishing and ageing with troubleshooting information and a section on tasting.

Lots of people ship their own wine via carriers like DHL, FedEx, and UPS. The national and international home winemaking competitions couldn’t exist without all the entries that were shipped. But its something that’s always had me confused and a little nervous. Part of the confusion is that I’ve heard so many different accounts of people trying to ship homemade wine. Some just package it up, drop it off, and it gets delivered. Others report some pointed questioning about the contents of their packages. Here’s a story that stuck in my head:

And you thought fish stories were strange

Someone entering a competition, packaged up his entry in a box that was clearly marked as containing wine. It might have been that he bought a case of wine and reused the box; I’m not sure about the details. At any rate, he was shipping it to a homebrew shop or winery with “wine” in the name. These two things caught the attention of the shipping clerk, who asked if he was shipping alcohol. The man lied and said he had bought marinade from the gift shop and was returning it. The clerk asked a few more times, in a few more ways, if he was shipping alcohol, but the man stuck to his story. The clerk accepted the package, and the man left, but he got a call that evening from the clerk. It turns out that the clerk called up the place and asked them if they sold marinades, they said no, and he wasn’t going to ship it.

On the other hand, one person reported calling up a shipping company and asking what they should do to ship homemade wine. He was told to open an account, package it up, and request an adult signature. The most common thing I hear, though, is people labeling their packages as “grape juice” or “vinegar.”

What does UPS say?

I decided to have a look at the UPS web site to see if I could find anything definitive and came accross something called the “UPS Tariff/Terms and conditions of service for small package shipments in the United States.” It wasn’t easy to find. There were all sorts of links to create shipping paperwork online, create an account, track a package, read about freight and international service, but nothing about terms and conditions. Then I looked at the site map, and at the very bottom of the page, I found the link.

A 48 page maybe

So what does it say about shipping alcohol? To find out, I searched for “alcohol” in the 48 page document and found “Section H: Alcoholic Beverages,” which comes right after the section on things prohibited by law and just before the sections on biological materials and firearms. In case you were wondering, biological materials are ok, as long as they are “prepared in accordance with all aspects of 49 C.F.R. § 173.199.” Firearms are ok too, “from and between persons not otherwise prohibited from shipping firearms by federal, state or local law.” Homemade wine might be ok, but homemade beer is not. After droning on about shippers that are licensed and authorized to ship alcoholic beverages, the document states flatly, “UPS does not accept packages containing beer or spirits for delivery to a consumer.” Beer or spirits? Does that mean wine is ok?

An experiment

The truth is that the 48 pages of legalese isn’t clear cut, so a commenter to my blog (best not to name him, I think) and I are going to experiment. He’s sending me some of his wine, and when (if?) it gets here, I’ll send him some of mine. I’ve picked out the wine that I’m going to send him, and I’m nervous and excited at the same time. Hopefully this story will have a happy ending. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’d love to hear about your experience or insight into shipping wine. Just leave a comment at the end of this post.

This grape growing season, here in the Puget Sound, is off to a slow start. Most vine growth will occur with warmer temperatures in the summer, so the cool weather we’re seeing right now might not affect this year’s crop. Still, it’s got me thinking about making up for lost time - managing the vines to take advantage of every photon of sunlight that comes their way. One way to do that is leaf pulling.

Leaves in the shade: Like open windows with the AC on

The idea behind leaf pulling is that a leaf in the shade isn’t just idle, it’s holding back the vine by consuming sugar and nutrients that could be going to productive leaves or fruit. So if you pluck leaves that are in the shade, or those that shade other leaves, the vine will still get almost as much benefit from photosynthesis as before, but will not have the drain of non-productive leaves. Done correctly, this will mean better fruit. It might even mean earlier fruit.

Fruit in the shade: A more complicated trade off

Sunlight affects ripening fruit in different ways. Too much can burn, and not enough can delay ripening. Here, leaf pulling decisions are more tricky. What do you do about a leaf shading a grape cluster? If you pull it, the cluster will get more sun, but at the cost of reducing photosynthesis and sugar production. I don’t know that there’s a this-always-works-answer here. In cool seasons, the risk of burning may be less so you might be more inclined to pull leaves that shade fruit clusters. This might also be true later in the season, after the hotter July and August days are behind you. On the other hand, it’s those cooler seasons, or times of year, when you want to turn every photon of light into sugar. For what it’s worth, I’m planning to pull leaves for maximum photosynthesis through the hot summer, then open up the clusters to sunlight in late summer/early fall.

The flip side of maximizing photosynthesis is making the best use of the resulting sugar. I’ll talk about doing that with cluster thinning in my next canopy management article.

Wine from Welch’s grape juice

Its tax day in the US, and this year taxes made me busier and grumpier than normal. With all that behind me, I’m starting to feel like my old self. So when Welch’s concentrated grape juice went on sale the other day, I bought twelve cans to make a “Tax Day Wine.” Yep, definitely feeling better! If you’ve never made wine from frozen concentrate, it probably seems like a nutty idea. There is method in this madness, however, and good technique can transform Welch’s grape juice into a drinkable wine that costs less than $1/bottle. Think of it as the home wine maker’s version of “Two Buck Chuck,” the simple, popular table wine that Trader Joe’s sells for $2/bottle in most of the country (and a higher but still affordable $3/bottle here in Washington).

What kind of juice

There are all sorts of frozen concentrates available, and I’ve made wine from a lot of them. The white grape juice, made from Niagra grapes, is the most consistent, and that’s what I’ll be using. Others have been hit or miss, with some of the hits being really good and some of the misses being really disappointing. I suggest you start with white grape (other brands, like Old Orchard, are fine). After you make that, you’ll have a better idea of what to expect from concentrates. If you want to make more, then by all means try the blends like Dole’s Pine-Orange-Banana - just watch your acid, don’t expect the wine to taste like the juice, and have fun.

I hope to make this in the next week or so, and then I’ll do a proper writeup. Until then, Happy Tax Day!

I just received this very impressive sample kit from the Oak Solutions Group. There’s a lot to experiment with: different types of oak, in different forms, with different levels of toast. I hope to be trying it all out, and writing about it, over the next year. To get one for yourself, follow this link, fill out the form, and select which samples you would like. They ask what company you work for and your title, but I just wrote in “Home Wine Maker.”

Time to experiment!

Tags: nad

The wine has fermented out, been racked, and is patiently aging in the basement. The winemaker, on the other hand, is not so patient. It isn’t brilliantly clear, but its flavor and aroma he’s interested in, so he bottles. The trouble with this approach is that a wine that isn’t clear has something in suspension, and it’s not going to stop settling just because a cork went into the bottle and a nice label got glued to the side.

What happens when you bottle too soon?

What sorts of things might settle out? It might be something harmless, like cream of tartar. It might be fruit solids. In the case of my 2006 Apple Wine it was yeast. I rushed it into bottles in December 2006, just two months after fermentation began. It was still and dry when I bottled, so there was never a question of fermentation pressurizing the bottles. But yeast went dormant in the bottles, settled out, and began to decay.

Good looking wine: More than just a pretty face

That doesn’t make for good flavor, which is why the bottle I opened last night failed to deliver on the promise I saw in it early on. I usually work to make clear wine because I appreciate how it looks in the glass, but I learned last night that lack of clarity can be more than an aesthetic problem.

The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center has an explanation for cool weather I noticed in March. When the eastern Pacific Ocean cools, called La Nina, it affects local climates in predictable ways. Here in Washington State it brings cool, wet weather. Since the CPC expects La Nina to continue into April, it looks like we’re in for another month of cold, rainy weather.

This is not what I expect my backyard to look like in Spring! I start paying close attention to the weather this time of year, because I’m starting my garden and a lot of what I grow will end up in a primary fermenter. How’s the weather looking thus far? It felt cold to me in March, and a quick check of temperature data confirmed that we’re off to a cold start. The average high temperature was 3.48°F (1.93°C) below normal and the average low 0.58°F (0.32°C) cooler. Most of my fruit trees are beginning to stir, and I’m worried about a late frost.

Tags: nad