Diēs Caniculārēs

July 10th, 2013

The vineyards are awash in quick growing shoots and developing berries.  Late Spring and early Summer have been slightly wetter than usual, but also very warm and sunny, all of which causes the vines to push some pretty intense vegetative growth.  Sometimes we wake up in the morning, walk out into Vineyard #3, and see this:

In need of tucking.

We’re entering the final period of berry development, a kind of a lag phase when berry growth slows down just before we enter veraison and begin accumulating sugars and flavors.  This is an important time for managing the canopy and cleaning up what you see above to make it more like what you see below:

Post-tucking, hedging, and lateral removal. Do these vines feel the love?

This type of full canopy will set the stage for good fruit ripening.  For one, we have a large area of leaves to pull in the sunlight and create sugars.  Also, we have an airy canopy, with lots of open space around clusters and leaves to allow that nice Virginia breeze through, which is one of our best deterrents of the high humidity.