Seyval Blanc in Bloom

Pink Leaves

The Concord produces beautiful pink leaves in the spring, and I just love the burst of color in the middle of all that green. Here's a similar picture from April 2006. Happy Spring!

Modern Day Fertilization

I took this video back in April, and I will explain soon why it took so long to post it. This is Dad driving the tractor through the new Concord vineyard spreading manure for fertilizer. The manure came from a neighbor along with the use of his "shit slinger." Pardon me, but that's what he calls it. And if you thought I was kidding about the dog that is obsessed with retrieving sticks just watch her bring me the stick while I am recording.

Jour de la Terre

We had our annual Earth Day event last weekend, and my good friend, Sara, took some photos for me so I could share them with you. See what you missed out on? =)

Route du Vin glass and herb at Sand Creek

Pregnant me pouring our Ste. Gemme and passing out goat cheese stuffed mushrooms

Jeremy at Twin Oaks


Amy and Sara, avid Route du Vin customers, and valued friends. =)

How to build trellis using homegrown cedar posts

I've talked here, here, and here about our love of cedar posts for our trellis. Here's a real tutorial. First you cut the cedar posts (see first link above) in the woods, sometimes split them if they are too wide, and then sharpen them. From there they get put on the wagon, usually a few at a time with the front end loader on the tractor.

wagon full of split cedar posts ready to go to the vineyard

Then Dad takes the post off the wagon, and carries it to it's spot in the row of grapes.

Then he holds the post, and lines it up straight with the vines, and other posts, and other rows while the tractor pushes it in the ground.


This is a picture of Dad motioning to push the cedar post into the ground.

This is the end result; rows and rows of new cedar posts out of our forest, ready to have wire attached and hold up vines.

Press

Click here for a great article on our Earth Day event last weekend in the online version of the Wall Street Journal. Check back here soon for information on our next Route du Vin Event, the Progressive Dinner, or go to our website, Route du Vin Wine Trail to purchase tickets online, or call 1-800-398-1298 to order your tickets over the phone.

Bud Break!

Riesling

Riesling

Vignoles

Here are pictures of our 2009 bud break. You can see the Riesling are a little further along than the Vignoles. We are having a late spring this year, it has been long and wet and cold. Click here to see the Seyval Blanc bud break on April 12, 2006, and click here to see pictures of the Seyval blanc at bud break on April 2, 2007.

Hand Pruning

After Dad trims the vines with the hedger, we then have to go back through the vineyard and tidy up. This is what we are doing today. We have to get rid of all the rachii, and dead wood because they can breed disease.

Jour de la Terre

The Wineries of Ste. Genevieve
Present
“Jour de la Terre (Earth Day)” on Ste. Genevieve’s Route du Vin
April 18 & 19, 2009
11am-5pm
Celebrate Earth Day this Spring on Ste. Genevieve’s wine trail! Each winery offers seasonal cuisine prepared with fresh spring herbs paired with their wines. Take home a complimentary herb seedling from each winery to start your own herb garden! Visit 6 wineries on Ste. Genevieve’s Route du Vin, as each winery will offer complimentary wine samples and special food pairings made with spring herbs for each ticket holder. If your passport is stamped at all 6 wineries your name will be entered in a drawing for “Jour de la Terre” giveaways! A little more than an hour’s drive from St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, journey through the rolling hills, big skies, and beautiful views of the 6 unique wineries on the Route du Vin:

Sainte Genevieve Winery

Cave Winery

Chaumette Winery
Twin Oaks Winery

Charleville Winery

Sand Creek Winery

Cost: $20/person until April 10, 2009; $25/person after April 10
(includes complimentary wine glass, and 10% off wine purchases made that day)
Tickets may be purchased in advance by calling Sainte Genevieve Winery:
800-398-1298, through our website RDVWine Trail , or in the tasting room of participating wineries. Tickets are non refundable after April 10, 2009.

Wine & Food Pairing Menu:
Sainte Genevieve Winery:
Goat Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms with Parsley Paired with Ste. Gemme
Charleville Winery:
Italian Pasta Salad with Oregano Dressing Paired with Chambourcin
Chaumette Winery:
Basil Pesto Marinated Chicken Skewers with Spring Carrot Salad Paired with 2007 Estate Chardonel
Twin Oaks Winery:
Homemade Salsa with Fresh Veggies & Cilantro Paired with Traminette
Cave Winery:
Grandma Strussione's Anise Biscotti & Pizzelles paired with Chardonel Off Dry
Sand Creek Winery:
Smoked Salmon Tar Tare' Dill Spread on Bagel Crisps Paired with Sweet Chardonel

Join us on the Route du Vin year round for these seasonal events!
3rd Weekend in April 2009: Jour de la Terre (Earth Day)
3rd Weekend in May 2009: Progressive Dinner
3rd Weekend in November 2009: Wine Diva Weekend
2nd Weekend in February 2010: Romancing the Grape
For additional info, hours, and directions visit: RDV Wine Trail

Norton Grape Cluster, Take 2

When I took this picture this morning, I didn't think there had been much growth, but then looking at last week's picture, the change is subtle, but noticeable.

A Picture A Week

I would like to post a picture of this bunch of Norton grapes once a week, hopefully on Fridays. I took this picture last Friday, and you can see I'm already late, but I have good intentions. I think it will be fun for you and I to see the weekly progression of a bunch of grapes.

Stay posted.

Bud Break Update

While I was out in California judging at the Pacific Rim International Wine Competition we had bud break here in the vineyard. It was probably around April 24rd or 24th, which is a little late. We have had a very wet and cold spring, which is fine with us considering the warm March we had last year, and then the sad Easter freeze.

We did have a light frost on April 29th this year, and some of our newly planted Catawba grapes got hit, but you can see from the picture on the left, they they are rebounding. You can see the brown, wilted growth that was frost bitten, and then you can see the new pink and green growth, including a new pink bud right where the frost hit. Pretty interesting. Grapes want to grow, they want to survive, and if they can find a way, they will, as this picture clearly indicates.

This is a picture of a tiny Vignoles cluster already formed. You can see this cluster has a shoulder, which is the smaller part of the cluster on the left. You have probably seen shoulders on grapes you buy in the grocery store also. If not, look for it next time.

This is a picture of the Seyval blanc grapes growing over the hill. All the new growth looks so crisp and green. Soon the canes will hang down over the top wire and leaves and tendrils and grapes will be everywhere.

Driving Posts

All this rain has got to be good for something. According to the St. Louis news, we had a record amount of rain in March. Right here on our property we had over 10 inches of rain in March. The ground is so saturated that it is easy to get posts into the ground. This is a new vineyard that we planted last year. We planted a few Gewurztraminer and Cabernet Franc on this site to see if we could grow a few vinifera besides Muscat Canelli. We covered them with straw over the winter; that's what you see all over the ground. Now we are putting in the trellis to get them to grow up and onto the wires we will hang later this spring. We cut all our own cedar posts in the winter and drug them out of the woods.

Route du Vin in Full Swing!

The Wineries of Ste. Genevieve
Present
“Jour de la Terre” Weekend on Ste. Genevieve’s Route du Vin
April 19th & 20th, 2008
11am - 5pm
Celebrate Earth Day this Spring on Ste. Genevieve’s wine trail!

Each winery offers seasonal cuisine prepared with fresh Spring herbs paired with their wines.
Take home a complimentary herb seedling from each winery to start your own herb garden!
Visit 5 wineries on Ste. Genevieve’s Route du Vin, as each winery will offer complimentary wine samples
and special food pairings made with Spring herbs for each ticket holder. If your passport is stamped
at all 5 wineries your name will be entered in a drawing for “Jour de la Terre” giveaways!
A little more than an hour’s drive from St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, journey through the rolling hills,
big skies and beautiful views of 5 unique wineries on the Route du Vin:
Sainte Genevieve Winery Cave Winery Chaumette Winery
Twin Oaks Winery Charleville Winery

Cost: $20/person until April 4th; $25/person after April 4th
(includes complimentary wine glass, and 10% off wine purchases made that day)
Please call for advance reservations Sainte Genevieve winery (800) 398-1298

Wine & Food Pairing Menu:
Sainte Genevieve Winery (Chives)
Serving Spring Green Salad with Fresh Chives, paired with their Vignoles
Charleville Winery (Cilantro)
Serving Fresh Spicy Cilantro Gazpacho, paired with their Genevieve Rivard
Chaumette Winery (Dill)
Serving Dill-Seeded Spiced Pork Loin with Whipped Dill Brie on Toast Points, paired with their Estate Chardonel
Twin Oaks Winery (Oregano)
Serving Crusty Buttered Garlic Bread Bruschetta with Tomato, Pepper & Oregano, paired with their Traminette Dry
Cave Winery (Basil)
Caprese Salad Skewers with Sweet Italian Basil & Fresh Mozzarella, paired with their Chardonel Off-Dry

Join us on the Route du Vin year round for these seasonal events!
June 2008: Progressive Wine Dinner
November 2008: Wine Diva Weekend
February 2009: Jour d’Amour Weekend

Motivational Weather

This is the type of weather Missourians live for; 70 degrees in March. Especially after such a harsh winter. I have bet with my assisstant that it will snow again before Easter. She says it will, I say it won't.

This is my Dad today on a John Deere with his "shirt sleeves" on. We are borrowing this tractor and hedger from another Missouri winery to see if we want to buy it, or one like it. It goes through the vineyard and trims off the tops and sides of the canes, then we go through and hand prune off dead wood, or left over racchi, or buds we don't want to keep. The more we can mechanize, the less we spend on labor, the better our bottom line.

I know I asked for rain, but I'm not sure I asked for three days of rain. Can you see the ground hog in the picture? Even he's trying to get out of the rain and into the barn.

This is one of the better looking Seyval Blanc grapes. You can see a fair amount of new green growth all through the arm. The clouds indicate a storm, and we could use the rain. The weather here is so crazy. I guess every spring is crazy. Yesterday we hit record high temps in the 90's. Today it's 80 something and the humidity is about the same. I'm sitting in front of the computer sweating. Here's hoping the cool front and rain gets here sooner rather than later.

We have very sporatic growth right now in the vineyard. This is one of the worst looking Seyval Blanc grapes. You can see only one bud on the whole arm. Most of the Concord look like this, and we are not expecting too much if any crop on the Concord.

Damage Control?

On Friday, Keith Striegler, director of The Institute for Continental Climate Viticulture and Enology came out to survey the frost damage to the vines. Keith was one of my teachers and mentors from Fresno, and now he works for us here in Missouri. He cut into some buds with a razor blade to see if they were green in the middle, to see how much bud damage we had. If a vine looked really bad, he shaved a small piece of the bark to see green to tell if the vine was even still alive. The Concord and Vignoles are not good at being fruitful on secondary or tertiary buds, so if we get any crop on them it will be a miracle. The Norton and Vidal look about the same, with about 60% damage, and the Seyval is supposed to be one of the most fruitful on secondary and tertiary buds, so he thought we would get a full crop from those vines. He said a frost of this much devastation, from Oklahoma to North Carolina, has not been documented in 118 years.

The next 6 weeks are the most critical, to see what if anything comes back and buds and sets fruit. Our hearts are heavy, our babies are sick, and we will have to be patient for their recovery. As Keith says, "this is a learning experience."

Remember those healthy looking new Concord shoots I showed you last week? The story is not the same this week. Mother Nature can be cruel. As soon as you feel like you've got the whole growing grapes things figured out, you've mastered your spray schedule, you've pruned to perfection, you've picked a perfect trellis system, something comes along the next year and throws a wrench into your wheel. Is that how the saying goes? The good thing for us, one of the many reasons we grow French hybrids here in Missouri, is that fact that secondary buds are fruitful. How fruitful is the question at large. I'll keep you updated on this dramatic turn of events.