Notes From the Vintner
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Welcome
to our column. We hope that you will return to learn interesting
notes on wine, and related subjects. Wine is a great gift from God
to be used for the enjoyment of man. It is a food, and should be
treated as such. It is meant to lift up the body and lighten the
soul. 6/01/08 |
Watch them grow…young grape plants and weeds. It is hard to spray the weeds, and keep the young plants trained. I think that they grow six inches each day. We planted 800 new plants in the vineyard to replace all the plants that were damaged or killed by the freeze last year. In doing so, we also changed the style of the trellis system. So even before the grapes started to bud, we have a lot of funds invested in this project. The plants look good and we are having a good growth rate with them.
One of our biggest problems is keeping the young vines tied to the pole so that the strong winds that have hit the area do not damaged the shoots. We have had major wind damage in the area. At the winery we lost some tree tops, and the winery sign. We were very lucky--others in the area lost so much more. We were out of power for three days, and also had to boil water. There were three men in town working on downed trees that were electrocuted, one of them being killed.
Things are better now; we just have to work harder to cover the problem areas. Be sure to get your spray program running. It is easy to put off spraying to tend to all the other problems. But take the time to stay on top of your spraying.
Keeping the wine tanks topped off is important. Gas for the truck is not the only thing going up. The price of CO2 gas is up 180%. It would be nice to raise the price of the wine by 180%, but then I would be drinking it all myself.
Besides all the other things going on, we have a 35 foot bell tower at the winery, with 8 bells in the tower, the largest being 46 inches across. This is going with the family chapel that I am building. O well, we all need more projects…shall we have a bit of wine???
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Robert G Cowie
Wine Maker |
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