Blue Door Vineyard’s Grapelog :: Grape-growing, winemaking & wine

Greetings and welcome to the October 2006 edition of our newsletter!

In this edition of the newsletter, I will discuss the following topics:

• Site Changes
• Newsletter Subscription Changes
• Grape Growing Plans
• Winemaking Update

Site Changes

If you have visited BlueDoorVineyard.com in the past, you probably have noticed the changes that the site has undergone. Chief among these changes was the acquisition of a new domain name – grapelog.com. I feel that this more accurately reflects what this website has become over time. Additionally, I have moved the site onto a dynamic publishing platform using Wordpress. Wordpress is a blogging tool that also contains alot of content management functionality. This change brings with it many useful features for people visiting the site as well as making it much easier and quicker for me to update the website. All in the name of freeing up more time to grow grapes and make wine!

Newsletter Subscription Changes

Up until now, I have managed your newsletter subscriptions manually. Recently, I setup a list management software that allows users to self-subscribe and self-unsubscribe from the newsletter. In addition it gives me greater control over the list and how and when and in what format e-mails are sent.

Grape Growing Plans

For my backyard plot of grapes, I have a number of things to do. First off, I plan to remove the Valiant vines either this fall or early next spring. There are only 3 alive and they are all pretty sick. I will be filling in their spots with Marquette and possibly some Prairie Star vines.

The Foch vines had a great year and should continue to do well – assuming a cold, snowless winter doesn’t do them in. The Sabrevois vines are looking great. They are filling up the trellis nicely and had a decent crop of fruit this year. One of my Frontenac vines was killed by a gopher late last fall. I have cut it down and will replace it in the spring with a vine that’s currently growing at the end of the row.

The Prairie Star vines also continued their progression toward filling up the trellis. Four of the vines have grown up past the top trellis wire. A fifth is close. I will be filling in an empty spot with a cutting next spring.

Winemaking Update

At the time of this writing, I am putting the finishing touches on a couple of batches of Frontenac wine. The larger batch has proven more difficult as the acids are still quite high. The smaller batch is more of a rose and is doing quite well. One decision I need to make now is whether or not and how much to oak these wines. Look for more info in future newsletters.

Thanks for reading this edition of our newsletter!

Don

Below is a picture of our Prairie Star and Frontenac vines taken today. The vines are heading into winter in great shape. Our only concern is to make sure gophers don’t chew on their roots and kill them.

To see more pictures from 2006, see our 2006 pictures page.

 

 

 

 

Word has it that there was a little bit of a glut of Frontenac grapes in Minnesota this fall.  This may not be totally surprising considering the amount of Frontenac vines that have been planted in the past 5-7 years. While the number of MN wineries continues to grow, it may not be growing at a pace to keep up with the amount of vines being planted. This is sure to change, although the same issue may rear it’s head again five years from now when the first harvests of Marquette grapes begin to fill vineyard bins.

During the time that I’ve been growing grapes and making wine, I find myself usually searching for the right tools to do a number of things – from converting between temperature scales to calculating how many vines will fit in an acre at various row and plant spacings. So I finally started creating a set of vineyard and winemaking tools. Click here to view the tools in a popup window.

I continue to toy with the idea of planting a ‘real’ vineyard on some property I have access to in western Wisconsin. It’s the old family farmstead on about 300 acres. I have yet to walk the property with my vineyard eyes on. But I’ve been told that there are several suitable locations – slightly south-sloping sites – that sound optimal for a decent sized vineyard. I’d probably start small with maybe 1-2 acres of vines. And it would definitely need a deer fence. So what I really need to do is conduct some analysis of what the costs would be to actually do this…things like:

• vines
• end and line posts
• trellis wire
• miscellaneous trellising hardware
• fencing

I plan to continue updating this idea on future posts or as comments to this post. So check back every so often for more as my plans progress.