The Vineyard Architecture for a New Vintage

We’ve been getting the vineyard ready for the growing season.  We’ve pruned last year’s fruiting canes, chosen new canes to lay down, and tied them to the fruiting wire.  This creates the vineyard architecture for the vintage.    We’re watching the weather, both to see how much water we’ll have for the season and also how much sunshine/warmth we receive as we anticipate bud break.  We’ve started to battle weeds in the vine row and to enjoy the flowers in the cover crop.  And, we’ve started to think about the decisions we might make – whether to make an exception to our new no-till practice for our youngest and oldest vines and how much crop we might carry to harvest.  The road ahead will have many paths for us to choose and that’s what makes this life so interesting and fun. -Bill Sweat, Proprietor