The 80/20 Rule

The grapes leaves arrive but not quite as planned. Last year, Kenny was quite optimistic with regard to the maturity of the plants. So I reluctantly tied up the vines last year as if they will be strong and fruitful from now on.

Now fast forward to the present, as you can from the photo, some of the vines were not as optimistic as the owner. What we're seeing is the 80/20 rule.

Twenty percent of the vines are growing nicely from the branches on the fruit load wire (bottom wire to the non-vintered). Beautiful shoots are nicely placed with loads of grape blossoms obediently beginning to hang down to make that lucious fruit. But they are not sprawled out all over the vineyard. Just in strategic locations. The location of the growth is somewhat telling. It's by the house and the garage and by the neighbor's trees.

Hmm......what gives? Maybe the vines were saved by the "heat" of the structures. Or maybe not. Maybe it's that those vines are closer to the water source and there's underground leakage. Or maybe the planets have aligned to send protective energy across just those sections. Who knows?

That leaves 80% growing up from the ground. Yes, I said the ground. Many of you may remember from last season, and the driving reason why I started a blog about life as a vinter was that I was so frustrated with the "training" of the vines from the ground.

The work is back breaking and slow and hot and whine, whine, whine. Geez, enough already. Poor you! Get over it! So moving on....

Well, we get to do it again for 80% of the vines. But this time there's more to the fun. First, we'll have to cut the old branches and trunks too for that matter, some 2"in diameter entangled in the wire. And more disentangling them from the new vines and disposing of them somewhere. Bonfire party here we come!

Only then do we get to retrain all the new vines back up to the fruit load wire....again. Resculpting the main vine to drive cordon shoots up to the second and third wire (called the canopy wires). Cordons are just shoots from that vine that is on that lowest wire.

It looks like not much harvest of grapes for wine this year. I think this might be a good time to try our hand at making our own wine. What'd ya think?

Thank goodness there is plenty of wine from mature, happy vines from all over the world happily chilling in our wine cooler. Waiting for me to just drink. Ahh....

Remember enjoy and imbibe.