Newsletter Volume II, Issue 6 (December 2004)
| Welcome Welcome to the December 2004 issue of our newsletter! Things are quiet in the vineyard this time of year. We extend our wishes to you and yours for a Happy Holiday and a prosperous New Year!  Newsletter Contents Tell your friends about our newsletter!  |
| Happy Holidays While it may not be a great time of year for growing grapes - especially in the colder reaches of the country like Minnesota, it is a great time of year to sample some wine. Whether you have some bottles of homemade wine that are ready or have picked up an interesting bottle from somewhere, there is nothing like a nice glass of wine and a fire to sit by to help get through the winter!  |
| Next Season Besides being a great time of year for drinking wine and eating a lot of great food, the offseason is also a great time to plan ahead for the next growing season. For us, this means taking a look at what we did in the vineyard this past season and figuring out what worked, what did not and what ideas we will look to incorporate in the future.  Next season will be the first one in which we do not plan to plant a lot of new vines. We do plan to transplant a number of vines from another location to our vineyard in Lake Elmo. Among those are 6 Prairie Stars, 3 Sabrevois, 4-5 Frontenacs and possibly a couple Valiants. All of these vines are healthy - they just have faced some extreme deer browsing and therefore have not developed real trunks yet. This past season we tested their ability to grow by putting two growtubes (one on top of the other) on each one in an attempt to keep the deer at bay. By mid-July all of these vines were well out of the double growtubes meaning they had put on over 6 feet of growth. This gives us pretty good confidence that they will thrive in our vineyard where the deer browsing is not nearly as bad. In addition to transplanting a few vines, we also plan to complete stringing wire on two more rows. Once done, our trellising will be complete - unless we decide to modify some rows for a specific variety’s growth habits. We also will continue with our fertilization plan from this past season applying granular fertilizer twice before the end of June. On top of that we plan to add ash from our fire pit to each plant. Read more about our plans for next year on our Vineyard Info page. |
| Winemaking Plans As we have mentioned in previous editions of the newsletter, we did not make wine from grapes this fall. Instead we plan to make another kit wine - most likely a white this time. Check our site for updates to the Winemaking page.  Thanks! Our next newsletter should arrive in your inbox sometime soon. In the meantime, thanks for reading and take care! Don’t forget to tell your friends about our newsletter! |
Blue Door Vineyard’s Grapelog :: Grape-growing, winemaking & wine » Newsletter Archive Said,
October 26, 2006 @ 3:21 pm
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