Has anyone ever promoted noble rot for your vines? If so, was it successful? What did you do?
Some professional vineyards in California and Australia inoculate botrytis. Has anyone ever done this on an amateaur level?
Or...have you ever discovered botrytis and didn't want it? How did you discourage or get rid of it?
Regards Jeff Chorniak
Weather has a lot to do with it, you need that. It looks ugly as sin, but really concentrates the flavors on the berries affected. Tokaji Aszu from Hungary is made this way and it is phenomenal, maybe better than Sauterne.
Before you try to reproduce it you may want to consider your weather patterns and see if they are favorable. I have no experience in innoculating it, I do know it only occurs naturally once in a while in most areas.
Joe
hunter wrote:
I'll promote noble rot. Go nobel rot!! I'm in favor of noble rot! I think it should be everywhere!
Sorry, this post is mostly for the cheap joke. Please forgive me.
Actually, since Botrytis is a fungus, I'd *guess* that one would actually be looking for a pro-fungus situation (wet, etc.) that somehow didn't also promote other nasty strains of fungi/mildew. Additionally, just looking at some websites about *control* of Botrytis (apparently not everyone promotes it...), I used to get it all the time on strawberries naturally, so one could try to "culture" it on a different plant, then transfer it when the time was correct.
But, I think I'll just wait for natural luck to have it happen to me - got lucky last year in buying grapes that had a touch. It's a non-late-harvest Riesling, with some very interesting flavors.
Rob
I got botrytis on the 'not-quite-ripe' portion of my harvest of zinfandel by putting those bunches loosely in an unsealed plastic bag in my garage, and just waited for the botrytis to appear. Only a couple of the grapes actually spoiled, and I culled them.
Leaving the grapes long enough on a vine will eventually promote botrytis (the spores are probably present in all vineyards). The portion of the same vineyard that wasn't harvested also developed botrytis, but had quite a bit of spoiled grapes due to rain-induced molds.
I guess that may be why botrytis is inoculated earlier in the ripening process... get it without the spoilage.
I'm also interested in other's experience.
Gene
hunter wrote:
I haven't done this (yet), but I've tried to read up on it.
The spores do appear to be pretty prevalent and weather conditions appear to have more to do with promoting beneficial results. The spores need some heat and moisture to start up and then enter the grape through the skin allowing water to escape, thus concentrating the good stuff in the grape. After the grapes are infected, dryer weather is needed to help the desiccation process and to hold other infections in check.
Some areas appear to promote Botrytis because of high humidity during the later ripening stage, followed by dry heat. Others have fog that rolls in but burns off during the day.
Either way, rain during the period appears to be detrimental because it can wash the spores off the grapes and it allows the vines to soak up water, swelling the grapes.
Andy
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