How many gallons of wine to a grape vine?

Darwin, where do you live? 2003 in the Mid Atlantic was a Horrible year for grapes. 4 x 5 is fairly close spacing. Do you use divided canopy trellising? I switched from VSP to the Lyre and prune to one counting bud spurs. The vines are loving it.

Darwin,

Last year was a tough year for getting grapes ripe. Along with everyone else I learned alot. Here is what I am doing now after the last 2 years. Like yourself I'm ADDING vines to my rows so instead of

8 ft spacings it's now 4 ft in-row spacing. I'm trying to convert from a Geneva Double curtain to a VSP with only 1 fruiting wire. Here's why. The vines I grow, chambourcin, have an upright growing pattern and DO NOT match very well to a high cordon system especially the GDC with 8 ft between POST spacing. The shoots were so hard to comb down I needed a machette to get through. I've learned that before you pick a trellis system you NEED to understand the growing pattern of the vines your trying to grow. I also am a big believer now that even though the GDC gives plenty of light and airflow it's a tougher trellis system to manage with an upright growing vine. So I think what you have as far as vine spacing is actually not bad BUT IMHO you need to have only 1 fruiting wire to facilitate airflow and light interception for quality fruit and buds. The closer the spacings the more potential crop you will have because of the extra vines but you can't over crop or vegetate the vines. 4X5 spacing is fine, they use close spacings in europe. The reason for such big between row spacings talked about so often is for the machinery needed to tend to the vines NOT the growing needs of the vines.Actually , the smaller spacings will naturally inhibit the vines because of the competition between them. Like you said , thinning is a way to increase quality BUT if you prune heavily to 2 canes laid in opposite direction with the correct # of buds for the variety, which would be 1/2 the recommended for 8ft in-row spacings since now your using 4ft, you'll have a canopy easily penetrated by air, light and fungicides with the fruit happy as a pig in spit. Just my 2 cents.

Bob

Darwin Vander Stelt" wrote in message news:...

I am in nampa, Idaho, at about 2600' elevation. Its a terrific place to grow grapes in some respects, less so in others. After 3 crops and 6 yrs of growing (took 2 years to get planted) I have not yet sprayed, with anything, and have had no molds, mildews fungus etc, and no insect damage either except maybe some wasps. We have a very dry climate, and the daytime temperature will get above 95 degrees in mid June. Night time temperatures are generally under 70, and by the time the grapes are ripening, in the

50's. Our climate is quite similar to the Prosser Washington area, which is becoming a very popular wine growing area, with something like 300 new vinyards. We use drip irrigation, have a very fertile soil, use own rooted plants, and plant vigor is pretty high. The 4x5 spacing came about because I wanted to have lots of varieties and also I spent some time in the Napa Valley looking at vineyards and saw some new ones going in at even closer spacing (4x4). It worked out that in my 50' x 150' area I could do 10 rows of 33 plants. So I have 1 of chardonnay, 2 of cab Sauv, 1.5 of cab franc, 1.5 of merlot, 2 of pinot noir, 1 of pinot gris, 1 of gervurtz.

About the only problem has been frost damage, mostly in the fall, but some in the spring as well. The hardest hit has been Cab sauv which mostly got froze to the ground with a 13 degree night November 1, 2002. They are the latest, and they had not gone completely dormant. Only a few of the 66 plants actually died, and i should have about 75% of a crop this year. This year I will install an overhead sprinkling system governed by a thermostat which will turn it on on cold nights during the critical periods when dormancy is not complete and in the spring after bud break. I saw some of the lyre systems in the Napa valley, and it does seem that the new vinyards are going either close spacing or lyre. (Just my amateur observation). How do you prune to " one counting bud spurs"? I don't know all the lingo of the trade yet!

One counting bud is the first bud on a cane after the basal bud. It is generally the first fruiting bud since the basal bud is usually not fruit producing.

Bob,

I agree with just about all you said, and you said it well. But I think one needs to take into account the site's growing vigor too.

I too grow some Chambourcin, but on a very fertile site, with high summer rainfall and somewhat less than full sun exposure. Because of the very adequate moisture, the competitive effect of close spacing doesn't seem to work and the vines want to grow leggy, with long internodes. My solution has been to train them to a high (6") single wire curtain. A moveable catchwire allows me to force the normally upward growing shoots downward, with a marked decrease in vigor. This also keeps the fruiting zone above the bulk of the foliage & in better sun after I strip the basal leaves at veraison. Being high up also keeps the fruiting buds out of ground-hugging frosts, as my site slopes & there's good air drainage.

I think a lot of people have read "Sunlight into Wine", by Smart & Robinson, and tried to apply their techniques. I did. The trouble is, what works well for Vinifera in New Zealand doesn't seem to work for FA hybrids in the eastern US. I'd be happy to hear from anybody who had similar/different experiences.

Mike,

Can't argue with what you said. I live 40 miles north of NYC so I know exactly how much rain you recieved last year and now this year. It's interesting that combing them down decreases vigor. I guess it has to do with apical dominance. Do you get alot of suckers near the ground every year??? If you "sucker" them maybe you can let them grow until they get in the way of the downward shoots. Also I assume you have grass in the row middles and iff your vines are THAT vigourous maybe you should try growing grass UNDER the vines also. What do you do for excess water??? My site is VERY sandy and the vigor while still strong is average I would say. BTW, what was the brix on your Chambourcin last year?? I could only get 16 out of mine.

Bob

Interesting discussion here about all that laws. Since i live in Quebec/Canada, anyone here know the regulation concerning the maximum production and if we can bring some wine out of our home for family purpose ?

Thanks, Sebastien Mailloux President AVAQ

Bob,

Funny, I live 40 mi. dead west of NYC.

Apical vigor is exactly the issue with forcing the canes downward. It's amazing how a shoot slows down once its redirected. Linear growth becomes more manageable, but the axial buds at the high point, usually on the bend, pop and try to become leaders. They're easily dealt with by rubbing off. Later in the season the game switches to lateral pinching, but that's a good practice for all systems I think.

I never really tried using suckers to devigorate a vine, but I've thought about it. I'm working out the other parameters of my vines still. Soon, probably. Do you know anything about the technique?

Yes, I've got lawn grass in the aisles, kept nice & neat because it's very visible from the house. Directly under the vines there's an 18" or

24" strip of landscape fabric with crushed stone atop. This makes mowing a lot easier, but additional grass, especially unmowed, would probably be better from a vigor standpoint.

Because of the slope, almost all rows have excellent surface drainage, but subsurface moisture is pretty high, as my place has quite a few small springs & streams. Something I just have to live with. One block of vines is actually on top of an old vegetable garden, so you can imagine the fertility.

Last year my Chambourcin came in at 16 Brix too, on Oct 10. A few bunches left to hang made it to 20 Brix by Nov 2, but they didn't look too good. On the whole, the crop was a disaster. Your experiences?

Mike,

I was told that laterals are good to keep if at all possible because of their sugar producing potential. Suckering is just making sure the suckers don't interfere with the other growth. You could pull them off in July or cut them back to one bud and use them every year. . Just make sure the vine can heal itself before winter. As far as the 2003 vintage. I wouldn't say it was a disaster. I left the must on the skins for only 3 days and put it through MLF. I think it has potential believe it or not. Maybe a 10% blend with the 2002 vintage. I think it's going to be a light enjoyable wine. How did the grapes that hung until Nov. get to 20 brix??? I thought once the leaves were gone the grapes don't increase in sugar content?

Bob

Bob,

I remove laterals for several reasons:

One, That's what I was taught by a successful pro grower.

Two, I recall reading (somewhere) that laterals actually contribute very little carbohydrate to the bunches; it goes into new growth. It seems they can actually be a drain on the vine, at the expense of the fruit. I suspect this might be less true in a very sunny climate.

Three, on a vigorous site, the amount of growth produced by the dense laterals is really counterproductive in that the inner leaves (3 deep or more), get virtually no sunlight and can't contribute to the fruit. Instead, the vine uses its share of sunlight to produce more and more new growth, perhaps to the point of not being fully hardened off for winter. Jackson & Schuster touch of this point in "The Production of Grapes and Wine in Cool Climates", pg. 79: "...once the bunch of grapes rapidly expands, nutrients are diverted from the apex to the cluster and shoot growth slows down or stops. Shoots with no clusters grow the longest, they cause congestion and because there are no grapes to absorb the photosynthates produced by the leaves, the excess is diverted to the rest of the plant, including the roots. This excess promotes further vigour and compounds the problem. The solution is for the grower to remove shoots with no crop or very little crop before they are 20-30 cm long. Vigorous vines so treated can often become easily controlled and yield and quality can both be improved."

I think they are mostly talking about non-bearing shoots, but I think it is largely the same thing. I know that my vines got overgrown to the point of inner leaves turning yellow when I didn't stay on top of the laterals.

I still like the idea of using basal suckers to slow down early growth. Guess I ought to try it.

2003 was a horrible crop for me. I harvested late, hoping to raise the Brix, but from about 50 vines, I got a whopping 85 pounds of fruit. I expected over 500#. It didn't help that the birds got every bit of Baco overnight, before I got the netting up. The reds yielded about 3 gal of a passable blend, but the whites yielded only about 1 1/2 gal of wretched stuff. Not a lot to show for my efforts, but that's farming.

The reason the few Chambourcin clusters raised their Brix so late in the season had nothing to do with ripening, but rather with dehydration. By that point they looked a little ratty, but still better than the whites. I don't know how a wine made solely from them would have turned out.

Mike, The fruitless shoots are not the same as laterals. Laterals come off the same shoot and are the newest growth on the shoot. I've read the exact opposite about carbohydrate production. I thought one of the reasons for hedging was to induce laterals just before veraison. I'm not sure how a successful grower would have the time to pinch off all the laterals. I could see removing the fruitless shoots. I got 70 gallons on 95 vines last year at 16 brix. If I was going to remove anything I'd lessen the fruit. I left the laterals because there was plenty of room in the canopy for them. I also leave the fruitless shoots but I may remove them this year I don't know. Why fix what isn't broke. I grow my vines on VERY sandy soil but I mulch them and they seem healty. Almost ALL SCIENTIFIC evidence about grapevines favors NOT removing leaves unless absolutely necessary. I would leave the laterals if I were you. Let the vines do what they have naturally done for millions of years. They just need to be pruned well and adjusted I'm not a big fan of interfering with them once they start growing. There must be a reason for lateral growth and I've read it's to increase leaves to ripen the fruit.

Bob

Bob,

Thank you for your responses.

I do know the difference between laterals and fruitless shoots; my comment was in regard to the similarity (I think) in how both can excessively shade the earlier leaves which more directly feed the clusters. I have had problems in the past with dense, shady canopies, which I attribute to my very fertile, water-abundant site.

Have you read "Sunlight into Wine" by Smart & Robinson? They go into minute detail about vine physiology, canopy management and shading, etc. (By the way, their approach is quite scientific. ;-) ) They point out that interior leaves of a canopy, by which I believe they mean the third "layer" in, are net _importers_ of photosynthates. They also present data showing that the leaves of actively growing shoots (like laterals?) are also net importers for about the first 25 days of growth. [This seems to explain why laterals retard main cane lengthening.] These two points seem to mean that dense canopies & actively growing shoots make it more difficult to accumulate sugars in the fruit.

Further on in the same book, the authors, who basically recommend vineyard retrellissing as the best solution, say that shoot thinning (suckers) and shoot trimming (to 10-20 leaves) can be done annually as a "band aid" fix.[ But they _don't_ talk about lateral removal!! Hmmmm...]

Cox, in his readable if not overly technical "From Vines to Wines" actually does come out in favor of removing laterals to favor the main cane.

BTW, I didn't mean to imply my commercial winemaking friend actually _gets_ to remove laterals. It's clearly impossible to do so on a large scale. But I've seen him pull enough of them while walking the rows to know that he would do it generally if he could. His explanation was in line with mine. He's had exceptional results with Vinifera here in NJ for over 20 years, so I value his experience.

Also,Bob, what yield per vine do you aim for with your Chambourcin? I look for about 15#, or 15 clusters per vine. I cluster thin to that level, usually one per shoot. I'm wondering if trying for quality over quantity is adding to my vigor problem.

Lastly, I like the idea of following nature's lead in letting the vines grow as nature intended. Unfortunately, we're not asking the vines to grow & produce as they do in nature. We grow artificially selected varieties & clones, selected not on the basis of survivability, but rather on the bases of flavor, sugar production, disease resistance, etc. And we want uniform, high quality crops every year. Natural, untinkered-with growth doesn't easily lend itself to these. "Natural" wine is seldom good wine, IMHO. We all do some level of tinkering, if only at the level of varietal selection & pruning. Like you, I prefer to tinker as little as possible, and try to follow the vines' lead. But I'm still trying to figure these vines out after 7 years.

Ahhhh...Sometimes I think I think too much. And talk too much. Sorry for the long post.

Mike MTM, Cokesbury, New Jersey, USA