Back to Discing

 

 

 

T-budding is over, and now it’s back to our more standard vineyard routine. All of the late rains we got in the Spring meant that we had to hold off on flail mowing the China Bowl until the ground was dry enough to get the tractor down the rows. This in turn meant we had to hold off on discing China Bowl to incorporate all of the mowed cover crop material back into the soil. Now that the ground has dried out somewhat, the mowing is done, and the T-budding crew is out of the way, we have had time to get the tractor out and disc China Bowl.

If you look closely, you can see the brown earth that has been tilled up in the area surrounding the tractor. Individual areas sometimes have to be disced several times in order to get the soil properly tilled, depending on how wet and clumpy the soil is.

Mixing all of this organic matter down into the soil will produce a welcome burst of nutrients to the vines, which are currently growing like crazy. We got a late start to this growing season, and now everything is catching up in a big hurry!

To visit that Amapola Creek Winery main site, please click here.

T-budding is completed!

 

 

 

Today the crew continued the T-budding project, converting about 700 Cabernet Sauvignon vines over to Mourvedre.

Mourvedre is a Rhone red variety that we will eventually include in our Cuvee Alis, along with the Grenache that we budded over the weekend. Mourvedre is a slightly difficult grape to grow, because it tends to ripen very late in the season. To help it ripen up a little earlier, we are converting vines at the very top of the hill in China Bowl, where it gets very warm and the soils are thin, both of which encourage faster ripening.

The first step in T-budding a vine is to make a cut in the trunk where the budwood will be inserted. It may look simple, but making the cut properly is actually a very precise matter. These workers have been perfecting their technique for years.

Once the cuts are made, the budwood is inserted.

Positioning the bud in the cut is tricky, the vascular tissue of the budwood and the vine have to match up very closely for a graft to form. This process is called T-budding because on bud is grafted onto either side of the vine, and once the shoots push the whole plant will form a “T” shape.

Now we will wait for the new shoots to push, and then we will train them up onto the trellis wires to form the new arms of the vines.

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T-budding begins!

 

 

 

Last weekend we finally began the process of T-budding! As you may be aware, we have been planning to switch over some of our Cabernet Sauvignon vines to Grenache to use in our Cuvee Alis program for the last several months. The process of converting vines from one variety to another is somewhat involved; it requires special pruning during the winter, followed by topping and stripping the bark from the vines in the days leading up to T-budding.

The final step in the process is the T-budding itself. To T-bud, two notches are cut on either side of the trunk of the Cabernet Sauvignon vine. A little piece of Grenache budwood (dormant buds held in cold storage from last year) is inserted into each notch very carefully, so that the vascular tissue from the bud lines up with the vascular tissue of the vine. The whole thing is wrapped in tape, so that it looks like this;

The tape is there to hold the buds in place so that there is time for the graft to form between the buds and the trunk. It also keeps foreign material out of the graft, so that it doesn't become infected.

Once the budwood has finished growing into the trunk, the buds will push and new shoots of Grenache will emerge. Any other shoots that may pop out of dormant buds from other spots on the trunk will still be Cabernet Sauvignon, and so they will be pulled off, leaving only the Grenache to grow. After a few seasons, the entire top of the plant will be only Grenache tissue that will produce Grenache grapes!

This block will look a little bit bare until the new buds push. The three rows in the foreground of this picture have been budded over to the Bien Nacido clone of Grenache, which is the same one that we already have growing up in the Bobcat Run block. The rest of this block has been budded over to Tablas Creek clone D. Since rain during flowering can greatly reduce yield in Grenache, we decided to use two clones that would flower a few days apart, sort of hedging our bets against losing the entire crop to a late spring rain.

The Grenache is finished, but we are still planning to bud over another half acre of Mourvedre tomorrow. Be sure to check back for more detail on how T-budding is done!

To visit the Amapola Creek Winery main website, please click here.

Switching over to Grenache

 

 

 

As you may remember, we are converting some of our Cabernet Sauvignon vines over to Grenache this year. The T-budding process is very close at hand, so we are putting the vines through their final stages of preparation.

This vine has been topped, meaning we cut the 'crown', or upper part of the vine off (you can see it laying on the ground), and stripping the outer layer of bark away from what's left of the trunk. We are planning to splice the Grenache buds in just a few inches down from the cut. If you look carefully, you can see that the loss of the crown of the vine is causing latent buds to push further down the trunk.

It also looks like our Grenache benchgrafts are doing well, all of them are pushing shoots and setting out fully formed leaves.

The cardboard carton around this benchgraft is there to protect the young vine from rodents like voles and rabbits. Once the cover crop has been cleared, unprotected young vines like these become an easy target for small herbivores.

The growing season is really starting to take off, be sure to follow it along with us!

To visit the Amapola Creek Winery main site, please click here.

Richard Arrowood on the radio tomorrow morning!

 

 

 

For those of you in the San Francisco Bay Area, tune in to 910 AM tomorrow morning at 11 to hear Richard speak with Joel Riddell on Dining Around! Joel recently sat down to dinner with Richard over the Amapola Creek wines, so there will be a lot to talk about, don’t miss it!

To visit the Amapola Creek Winery main site, please click here.

More Action in China Bowl

 

 

 

The warm weather is drying things out, but the Eastern half of China Bowl is still a little too wet to mow.

Water drains from the soil more efficiently on the slopes, which is why they were dry enough to mow. As you can see, the rain has done wonders for the remaining cover crop.

All of that water in the East end of China Bowl may be slowing down our efforts to flail mow, but it is actually a very good thing. All of that soil moisture has encouraged our Grenache benchgrafts to go through budbreak!

It's a little hard to make out in this photo, but the little round piece of vegetation in the very center of the frame is actually a tiny grapevine shoot poking up through the soil.

This is exciting because it proves that our planting efforts late last Winter were successful. Now that the benchgrafts have started to go through budbreak, we will have to take some special precautions to make sure they grow properly. Be sure to check back tomorrow to see what it is we do!

To visit the Amapola Creek Winery main site, please click here.

Warm weather!

 

 

 

The sun has been shining for the last few days, and we are seeing a significant warming trend (it got over 70 F today), so the vines are catching up in a hurry!

A week ago there was barely any movement in the China Bowl Cabernet Sauvignon, and now just about every bud has broken. All this sunlight, coupled with rising temperatures, signals to the vines that it is time to start growing.

The Grenache in Bobcat Run was already through budbreak before the sun even broke through, and now it is really starting to take off.

As you can see, the Grenache is already putting out fully formed leaves. From this point on, we are expecting the shoots to grow very quickly.

We are looking at temperatures in the low 80′s later this week. This sunnier, warmer weather is exactly what we need after all of the rain. The soil moisture will be high, so the vines are going to have no problem establishing canopies for the Fall. This is a somewhat late year so far, because the early Spring was so cold. Happily, we are still far enough away from harvest that catching up shouldn’t be a problem, especially with weather like this!

To visit the Amapola Creek Winery main site, please click here.

Barrel Maintenance and Media Praise

 

 

 

The weather here in Sonoma Valley has been slightly unpredictable for the last couple of days. We’ve been expecting rain, and we’ve been getting it, but mainly in fits and starts amidst a few sunny hours,  instead of a steady downpour. It’s still a little too muddy to get out into the vineyards to mow, so instead we’ve brought things back inside and started working on our monthly barrel maintenance.

The metal box on the cart in the lower right-hand corner of the picture is our ozone generator. It produces water that is saturated with ozone, which is a highly reactive molecule made of three oxygen atoms. Ozone is lethal to every known microbe, and it breaks back down into harmless oxygen molecules in a matter of hours. These qualities make it an ideal substance to use when cleaning the inside of empty barrels, which have a large surface area prone to harboring undesirable microorganisms.

Empty barrels are first rinsed with hot water, followed by ozonated water. Afterwards, we add a little sulfur dioxide gas by burning a sulfur wick inside the barrel. The moisture from the rinsing also keeps the wood from completely drying out, which means these barrels will be less likely to leak when we do eventually fill them again. It’s just another aspect of the cyclical nature of work in a winery!

In other news, we received a very nice review for our 2009 Cuvee Alis from Fredric Koeppel of the Bigger Than Your Head food and wine blog. As always, it is very nice to hear appreciation for our wines!

We make precious little of this amazing wine, be sure to check it out before it's gone!

To visit the Amapola Creek Winery main site, please click here.

More Rain

 

 

 

It’s raining in Sonoma Valley, which means our vineyard operations will be put on hold again for a few days. Fortunately, China Bowl was dry enough yesterday that we were able to get about three quarters of it mowed.

Mowing here, at a high point in the vineyard, was easy because drainage made the soil drier. We left the softest areas at the bottom of the hill for last, since they are most likely to bog down the tractor. We will come back to them when the soil dries out again, and in the meantime keep ourselves busy weed-eating the parts of the block that have been mowed.

Before the rains came, we also found that the Cabernet Sauvignon vines in the Southwest corner of the Montana Vista block have started pushing shoots (this is the next step following close on the heels of budbreak).

Due to the rain, we are planning to spray this area with a very light dusting of sulfur and copper oxide, to prevent mildew from taking hold.

 

We also noticed that discing made the rocky composition of this section of Montana Vista much more obvious.

All these rocks make for better soil drainage, which in turn makes for smaller vines. Smaller vines tend to break bud and push shoots a little earlier, so this is why this section of the vineyard is a little further along than the rest.

Even though it delays our vineyard work a little, we are very happy to see more rain. This is turning out to be a late year, but it could easily catch up with more warm weather, having a lot of water available to the vines will help with that process, letting the vines grow quickly as we move from Spring towards Summer.

To visit the Amapola Creek Winery main site, please click here.

Discing

 

 

 

As we have waited for the lower reaches of the property to dry out, we have had an opportunity to start ‘discing’ in the upper vineyards. Discing is actually a soil tilling practice, it gets its name from the large steel discs attached to the back of the tractor.

Unlike the flail mower, this is not a powered attachment. It works by using the weight and power of the tractor to force the discs down into the soil, where they cut it up and turn it over as the tractor passes. This is done primarily to take all the mowed vegetation and put it down into the soil where it will decompose more quickly. This causes a sudden increase in nutrients available to the vines and helps them during the early part of the growing season.

When the soil is dry and hard, it can be difficult to get the discs to penetrate the soil properly, and so the driver will have to make numerous passes to get the soil adequately tilled. Fortunately the soil is currently relatively soft from the recent rains, so it’s only taking two passes to get things tilled properly.

Since we've been able to move through quickly, we've managed to get the upper vineyards finished. We may need to disc again at some point during the growing season as grass pushes back up in the rows, but for now we're ready to let the growing season commence!

It’s looking like we may see more rain later this week, so we’re hustling to get as much work done in the lower section of the property as possible before the soil gets wet again. Be sure to keep checking in to see how it’s going!

To visit the Amapola Creek Winery main site, please click here.