Plus: the Pinot grigio.

Not to be outdone by the Orange muscat, the Pinot grigio vines are also ready to get started with the 2019 growing season.  I do love the fact that spring is fast approaching.  And I love that I don't have to check it's proximity on a calendar - I have grapevines for that.
I'm starting to panic a little, as I always do this time of year, that with all this rain I may not be able to get all the Syrah and Cabernet sauvignon vines pruned before they want to start going through bud break.  The weather this coming week is forecast to be nice.  We'll see.

Must(cat) you do that?

Apparently, it must.  Despite all the rain we have been having, the Orange muscat vines have decided that they need to get a move on.  Although bud swell is not determined by atmospheric moisture, but rather by soil temperature, it has been rather cool of late, so I wasn't expecting the vines to be so enthused.  Wrong.  Again!
The atmospheric moisture came with an earnest all day today.  I tried to prune in the Syrah vines, but finally gave up as I was spending more time sheltering in the barn, from rain and hail, than actually out in the vineyard pruning.  It was when Vinodog 2 found something to incessantly bark at, in Vinomaker's lumber supply, that I decided to call it a day.  It was then that I discovered...

Don't start me, fuzzy-buddy.

No, stop!  I am not ready for budbreak.  This promiscuous, young Viognier vine, the only Viognier vine in Vinoland, is trying its hardest to get going for the season.  I made it my job to set the little fellow straight, but not before I finished pruning the Pinot grigio vines. 
A good example of apical dominance in Vitis vinifera, albeit a very subtle one, this stunted lateral shoot was having delusions of grandeur.  The whole unit was removed (as is all the lateral growth of this nature), but not before the prospect of an early start to the growing season gave me, well, a little start.

Having a swell time too.

Not to be outdone by the Orange Muscat, bud swell is now proceeding nicely in the Pinot grigio (PG) vines.  I had meant to have a look at the PG vines on Sunday, but I simply run out of daylight (despite the beginning of Daylight Savings Time).  Then yesterday, when I got home from work, it was raining so heavily that, after taking V2 for a quick walk, I wasn't sufficiently interested in bud swell to warrant hanging around in a soggy vineyard.  So today it was: and, lo and behold, I once again have some enthusiastic little PG buddies.

Having a swell time?

I finished pruning, and tying down, Vinoland's Syrah vines this past Sunday and then immediately started pruning the Cabernet Sauvignon vines.  Busy, busy, busy.  Just as I finished pruning for the day today, I had a quick look in the Orange muscat vines to see if anything was happening.  Sure enough, my little buddies are awakening and the buds are beginning to swell open.  Exciting.

Suspicious activity.

Yikes!  Bud swell has been spotted in the Orange Muscat (OM) vines. Today, I happened to glance at the OM when I was passing them by, gathering my things in order to start pruning the Syrah, and wasn't sure that what I was seeing was actually the expanding OM buds rupturing their scales.  Suspicious, that something was afoot, I went and had a look-see.  Yup, on closer inspection I discovered that the OM are indeed enthused and ready to get on with vintage 2017. Early pruning will do that, sigh.
In reality, the OM are only about a week earlier than last year, and they are even a little behind schedule when compared with the 2015 vintage. Bud swell just seems early to me this year.  It is probably because, due to the rain, I feel that I am a little behind.  Prune on, Vinogirl!

Busybuddies.

I finished pruning the Pinot grigio vines on Vinomaker's birthday, this past Friday.  Today I finished tying all the Pinot grigio canes down.  It feels good to be finished with the white grapevines already.
It was a gorgeous day, a bone-warming 65°F, so I decided to start pruning the Syrah vines.  I didn't get very far though before it was time to take Vinodog 2 for a walk.  On my way past the Orange muscat vines I noticed that bud swell has begun.  It's happening, right now!  And so another vintage begins: my viticultural-clock is ticking.  Sigh.

Et tu, Budus?

Ahem!  I think the Pinot grigio vines are trying to seek their revenge on me for sneaking up on them with a sharp pair of Felcos.  Methinks, I'd better watch my back.
I started pruning the Cabernet sauvignon vines today.  They're still dormant-ish, although the pruning wounds are bleeding profusely. Hopefully, in this battle of Vinogirl versus budbreak, I started pruning early enough this year that I'll be finished before the Cabernet, and Syrah, vines wake up, get organised and gang up on me.  "Cry 'havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war."  Or something like that.

Buddy, you're back!

Yup, budbreak in the Orange muscat vines is underway.  My little buddies are returning for another vintage of grapey-goodness and I am happy to see them.  Only about a week earlier than last year, I actually think this is the very same vine that I photographed in February 2014. What an overachiever!
Vinoland's white grapes are all pruned and tied down, (I finished them on Tuesday), and tomorrow I will start on the black grapes. Weather permitting, I plan to prune all this weekend which should keep me on track to get all the pruning done in a timely fashion this year.  Well, that's my plan anyway.
Bud on little buddies!

Anthesis: 2014.

Today I noticed the onset of anthesis, or bloom, in the Pinot grigio vines - as I spent the entire day suckering, thinning, disbudding (odd word) and stuffing wayward shoots under trellis wires.  Buds, buds everywhere.  This time of year the vines, with their enthusiastic unruliness, tend to push buds out from wherever they can.  Leaf buds, flower buds, axillary buds, adventitious buds, lateral buds, water sprouts, suckers - there is new, succulent vegetative tissue pushing out everywhere.  Adventitious buds are sometimes helpful in replacing lost positions on a grapevine, but generally all this extra growth just serves to divert vigour and productivity from the buds I selected when I was pruning.
Some buds on grapevines can remain dormant indefinitely, but when conditions are just right these latent buds may become active and push out from the older, woody tissue where they have been snoozing.  The mini inflorescence in the photograph was apparently very impatient to do something this spring, as it budded out from this vines trunk, just above the graft union, without any leaves for companionship.  Hope it doesn't get too comfortable because it's coming off tomorrow.  Sorry buddy!

Shoots galore!

When a winemaker/grower friend recently asked me if I had ever seen both the primary and secondary shoots push on a grapevine I answered, "Yes.  And even the tertiary bud occasionally".  She seemed a little concerned that something was amiss in her vineyard as she hadn't really witnessed this phenomenon before.  I, on the other hand, deal with this vegetative-merrymaking every year in Vinoland and have, in the past, simply attributed it to the over exuberance of certain vines.  One such Cabernet sauvignon vine, sporting all three shoots, posed for the above photograph.  But it did get me thinking.
After a quick shufty through all of my viticulture books with no satisfactory findings, I turned to the internet - not much joy there either I'm afraid.  The conventional wisdom online is that the main reason for a secondary shoot pushing is the death or removal of the primary shoot.  Call me old fashioned, but I think the primary shoot in the photograph looks very much alive.  The second reason is perhaps that the vine has suffered a severe pruning.  Nope, I prune the same every year - 2 eight-bud canes and 2 two-bud spurs (5' by 7' spacing) which, in my opinion, is not that severe.  The third reason given is boron deficiency.  Ha!  Coombsville is known for boron toxicity: a neighbour of mine even trucks in water for their vineyard because their boron-rich well water would kill their vines. 
Not being happy with any of my findings, my last resort was to email Dr. Stephen Krebs, my VWT professor at NVC (who, I just found, out is retiring this summer and I am just devastated by the news).  If there is one, ultimate viticultural-brain to pick then Dr. Krebs is in possession of it.  And he said; 
"As for the multiple-bud push, the only explanation that makes sense, of the ones you listed, is severe pruning (which translates to “over exuberance”). If you combine that with a lot of soil moisture and warm, sunny conditions at bud break, I think you get many doubles and even triples."
And there you have it, at least I am satisfied with that explanation.  The climatic conditions at budbreak were such that all of Vinoland's vines were invested with a natural exuberance - which translates as a lot of suckering and thinning in Vinogirl's near future.  I love vines.

Budding debut.

There's a lot going on in the vineyard - the least of which includes me, frantically pruning my way through the Syrah -  especially in the Orange Muscat (OM) block where the vines are very enthused.  And there's a lot going on in the OM's new growth; baby leaves, baby tendrils and baby flower clusters.  I love how glossy the OM shoots look when they are brand new.  The weather has been beautiful all week and, I swear to goodness, the OM vines grew a whole half-inch in one day.  I will be finished with pruning the Syrah tomorrow (thanks to a lot of help from Vinomaker) and then I will return to the Cabernet vines.
If anyone needs to find me, I'll be in amongst the Syrah.

Malt vinegar.

What could be worse than drinking a less than stellar brand of American beer? How about drinking a 1986 Liebfraumilch perhaps, from the same company?  Yikes! I'm not even going to waste the energy opening this one.