Blue Door Vineyard's Grapelog :: Grape-growing, winemaking & wine

Glad to say I’ve officially woken from my annual mid-winter hibernation. When it gets really cold ( for non-Minnesotans that would be -25f or a string of days where the high doesn’t get above zero) and the days are short up here in Minnesota, a person just doesn’t feel like doing much. But now that it’s mid-February and the days are getting longer and sun is gaining strength, you can’t help but jump forward a couple months and think about when the average daily highs will be in the 50’s!

That said, I’ve begun to ruminate on my plans for this spring. One of the first things on the agenda will be pruning sometime around mid-March. Then I’ll be preparing for starting a few new plants – likely more Prairie Star, Frontenac and Marquette. Sometime in that same time frame, I need to rack two batches of wine that I started last fall – one Frontenac and one Valiant. I’ll be posting more about my plans for which vines will go where in the coming days.

I racked the Valiant wine to secondary tonight. Overall, I’m pleased. If my calculations are correct, alcohol is a little under 16%. There is decent body, with a slight acidic bite. I added light oak chips to it right after racking. It’s a pretty dark color – more purple than red. But a nice color nonetheless. In about two weeks, I’ll rack it again and set it aside to age.

I pressed and racked the wine to secondaries tonight. Everything looked, smelled and tasted great. I am especially interested in the Prairie Star wine – it smells awesome. I only wish I had had more PS grapes. The Brix tested out at 8%. The Frontenac is coming along well too. I can taste the acid, but not nearly like my first Frontenac batch a couple years ago. I think with some aging and oaking both of these wines should turn out fine. The Frontenac Brix tested at 7% tonight.

With last night’s heavy frost in my area, I decided to harvest the Frontenac and Prairie Star grapes this morning. The temps were in the upper 20s (F). All told, I picked 22 lbs of Frontenac and 8 lbs of Prairie Star grapes (one vine). Earlier I had picked 14 lbs of Valiant grapes. I spent some time before work sorting, crushing and sulfiting. The Frontenac went into my larger primary and the Prairie Star into a smaller backup primary. I covered the primaries and will let them sit until this evening.

Just in from a some time spent in the vineyard…

The vines are all doing great. Our weather has been unseasonably cool and very dry, so I’ve been watering the vines pretty regularly. Tonight, I fertilized the newer vines with a miracle-gro type of liquid fertilizer. The new vines and recovering vines are doing great. The two new Prairie Star vines are just past the bottom wire and have a good shot at getting to the top wire this season.

The recovering vines like the Foch are doing extremely well. Most are near or above the top wire. One of them that I trimmed to 2 buds this spring has already be cut off about one foot above the top wire and is working on building canes for next season! It’s HUGE!

The Sabrevois are making progress…since I first noticed them about a month ago as teeny-tiny shoots, they are all near 1 foot tall. My hope is to get them healthy enough by this fall that they over-winter well and can continue the comeback next season.

The Frontenac vines look great with alot of fruit. The Valiant vine is also going well. Last week I noticed some signs of disease on it so I applied a liquid fungus treatment that seems have to done the trick.