New vineyard construction starts

Our first project of 2013 is the new fence that will keep the goats out of what will be the new the 'river' vineyard. We got started by cutting down 5 or so tall red oaks that died in the drought of 2011.  Today, we started replacing the old horse fence with new goat fence from the horse pen to the Northwest property line.

Notaviva Vineyard

I came across the Notaviva vineyard (Virginia) while searching for trellis supplies.  It doesn't sell any trellis supplies, nor use the kind of trellis I want, but it is a nice blog and documents both a love story and the construction of a vineyard.  Que Bueno!

Exploring the river bank

I have lived here since 1997, but never explored the river bank.  Based on our eastern neighbors rock work, it seemed there was a rock ledge about half way down the bank.  Today, I took my trusty chain saw and cut a path through the brush, trying to follow that outcrop along our heavily wooded river bank.

I started at the eastern side of the property, where the neighbors had built rock walls along the bank.  These walls generally followed outcrops that had always been visible.  Our bank has always been wooded, and devoid of obvious outcrops, but I could make out the general form of the outcrop's lip. Above the lip, the bank had only a shallow slope.  Below it, the bank was much steeper.  As I made a trail through the brush, I noticed junipers seemed to sit right on the lip.  All I had to do was cut a trail just up the bank from this line of junipers.

It turned out the line ran all the way from our eastern property line to the western corner.  In fact, just on the other side of the property western line, another outcrop emerges from the river bank. There is also a 2nd lower bank that seems to emerge about 2/3s of the way to the western property line. This one is about 6 feet below the first.

A very interesting trail!

Growing Degree Days - Comparisions

I came across a nice Growing Degree Days calculator on the Weather Channel.

Here is a comparison of the Fort Worth - Dallas, Tx area to other wine growing cities.  As you can see, Texas is much like North Africa in terms of 'growing degree days'.  Central Texas gets 30 inches of rain.  Tunis gets 18.

Pergola Tendone (tent)

Tendone or Pergola Abruzzo

The wire scaffolding is from 6 to 7 feet high. From vertical trunks, 3 to 5 canes branch off horizontally and form a continuous cover over the ground.  The scaffolding rests on iron or concrete poles.  The canes are arranged radially for a length of about 6 feet.  Canes are productive for 2 or 3 years, then pruned away for younger canes.

 Here is how it might look.  This is from the Abruzzo region, immediately east of Rome.

This form of viticulture is famous for the quantity of grapes it produces:

Sicily's Giuseppe Guastella of Mazzarrone in Catania with his Victoria grapes. This production is obtained in polyethylene sheeted greenhouses without artificial heating.  The sheeting causes elevated temperatures inside the greenhouse allowing early budding, flowering and ripening.

Here is another tendone.  This one in the Basilicata region, just north of Sicily.  Note the shade.  For an organic Texas grower, all that shade is 












This is an ancient growing style, and has been criticized by some agricultural specialists who favor industrialized techniques developed in cooler climates such as France, California and Australia for Vertical Positioned Shoots (VSP) trellis variants.
  
Advertised advantages of VSP over tendone include:
1. More resistant to adverse conditions such as fog and high humidity during the harvest
2. Higher sugar content at maturity occurred due to a lower yield per plant
3. More uniform maturation
4. Ease in mechanizing vineyard operations

This is a matter of some controversy.  See my 'VSP or Pergola' post or Maurizo Gily's 'Demise of the Italian Pergola Trellis' (which is optimistic about the Italian pergola's future).

Pergola Romagnola

 This might be clearer (from wikipedia):

Ok.  These are both too abstract, so here is photo from Leone Conti winery is located in the hills above Faenza.  Unlike the Veronese pergola that lifts the arbor, the 'pergola romagnola' uses suspension wires.

Trentina Pergola

Trentina Pergola

Comativ (seems to be a manufacturer of metal and prestressed concrete poles for agriculture)

Here is an alternative version:

Veronese Pergolas

It has not been easy to find example pergola trellis system plans.  So far, the best I have done is find photos of them on the web.

Here the best example that I've found: Marco Mosconi:

What catches my eye here is the the tall center posts and web-like pergola trellis. There may be a suspension system here with thin wire that cannot be seen in the photo.

What catches my eye here is diagonal 'edge' beams.  I suspect there are thin wires that cannot be seen in the photo that go down vertically to the ground.  A thicker cable connects the diagonal beams.  I'd love to know the details of this scheme.  It seems be be called a 'Veronese Pergola '.

According to V.I.P.I., in English: 'The vineyard store, accessories for vineyards,' located near Brescia, IT, there are several pergola systems:

Below is a YouTube video demonstrating how new shoots are tied to a Veronese Pergola:

The 1st minute in the below video covers several 'Veronese Pergola systems. 

Notes on the soil

The vineyard is on a river bank.  Next to the river, the soil is sandy.  About 300 feet from the river bank is a limestone outcrop.  As you get closer to the limestone, the soil increases in clay content and limestone cobbles grow more common.  Near the outcrop, it is a clay loam with many cobbles, some very large.  I started planting about 60 feet from the outcrop, and have added rows to fill in the area up to the outcrop. 

This year, I'm starting a new set of rows adjacent to the river bank, where the soil is very sandy.   The Pierce's Disease pressure should be higher, too.  The sharpshooters that carry the bacteria need the active growth near the water's edge. The higher PD pressure will help the selection process.

The pH is around 8.0.

I've been planting seedlings from a single cross in different soils to see if they have preferences.  Some crosses clearly prefer specific soil types, but my impressions are entirely anecdotal.  The wild cinereas like the limestone cobbles.  The wild mustangs like the sand.  Rupestris is pretty vigorous in the loamy area.  I'll plant some new largely rupestris seedlings up the near the limestone this spring.

Crosses with lots of aestivalis or labrusca crosses don't grow very well anywhere in the vineyard.  I don't know if it is the heat, the Pierce's Disease or something else.

VSP or Pergola?

Anyone who has lived through a Central Texas summer knows how important shade can be.  Would it be any different for organic life in Texas soil?

With this in mind, I've noticed that the ancient Romans and their modern decedents in Italy and Spain have traditionally grown grapes on pergolas.

Table grapes near harvest supported by a Pergola near Zaragoza, Spain 

"The pergola trellising system promoted by the Romans and still used in Italy, normally has fewer vines per hectare - with approx 1666 vines/ha in the classic pergola-trellised vineyard, compared with around 4000 vines/ha in a regular VSP.
In the pergola system, shoot-positioning is not required and canopy management is limited. The average Italian vineyard is less than 4ha in area so finding people to harvest the grapes is less of a concern, though two issues work against the pergola trellis: the position of the arms makes harvesting difficult; and the overhead design makes it difficult to use a modern tractor."

In Italy, there is something of a controversy over the benefits of moving to the northern style: "(Guyot trellis system, largely adopted in Valpolicello around 20 years ago and now believed to produce lower quality grapes than the pergola system)" 





Here is a similar description of the controversy, but in Argentina, at similar latitudes to Texas.
"The soils throughout Argentina were developed by alluvial action and vary between sandy with some clay and gravel and limestone. Soils in the Río Negro and Neuquén (Patagonia) regions are more chalky. Some areas languish in traditional support systems where grapes are grown on pergolas (“parral cuyano”), where vines are trained high off the ground with the clusters allowed to hang down. This style was conducive to the high-yielding Criollas varieties that were the backbone of the bulk wine-producing industry that sprang up in response to the large domestic market. In the late 20th century, as the market turned to focus more on premium wine production, more producers switched back to the traditional bilateral cordon and many adopted the vertical shoot position system. In the 1970s, yields were reported as surpassing 20 tons per acre in sharp contrast to the average yields in premium wine regions such as Bordeaux and Napa Valley of 2 to 5 tons an acre. Today vineyards are managed to produce quality fruit with improvements in irrigation strategies, yield control, canopy management, and the construction of more wine-making facilities closer to the vineyards."

Here is another webpage on the subject:
"As far as vine training is concerned they have had VSP (vertical shoot positioning) since 1982 but they also have the more traditional pergola system for some vineyards, and for some of the best ones too!
 The belief that the traditional pergola system is generally inferior to other systems in terms of the quality of fruit it produces appears not to be true, at least when it comes to a vigorous variety like Viognier.

With VSP, their yield is 10-12,000 kg per ha, but with the pergola system, not only is the yield much greater at 20,000 kg per ha but the quality is much higher.

Francisco explained that with VSP, Viognier enters a vicious circle which is difficult to break once established – vigour increases while quality decreases.

This is a good counter-argument example for the MW essay question, ‘Low yield equals quality'! "

Another photo:

All this seems interesting.  Maybe I'm being too simple, but the soil health seems to trump all arguments.  More shade means healthier soil.  Healthy soil should produce higher quality fruit.  This is Texas.  There is a lot more sum than even in southern France.  It seems that grape growers at latitudes similar to Texas tend to use pergolas, those in more northern latitudes use trellis.  This is particularly true in earlier times with more sustainable practices were in use.


I wonder how this issue could be settled scientifically?

2012 annual report

The Mills Vineyard is located in Glen Rose, Tx (80 miles southwest of Fort Worth).  The first vines were planted in 2005.  Wild mustang and cinerea grapes love it here.  Commercial wine grapes, with the exception of Lenoir, don't last but a year or two.  Thus, over the last 5 years, we've started breeding our own grapes by crossing wild and commercial varieties.  Since we are selecting for health, we use no pesticides or fertilizers.

The vineyard is only 0.25 acres and over 400 vines. In total, we produced about 0.25 gallons of grape juice (Extra) in 2012.  The most ever!  No wine making attempts, the juice was excellent and vanished within a few days of being picked.

All the vines are unique crosses. Lenoir produces commercially acceptable fruit, but it buds too early and ripens in the heat of August when temperatures are in the 100s.

The vineyard includes eight varieties that can be purchased at nurseries.  In terms of health here, the 'standard' vines are ranked below from healthy to dead:

Extra (vigorous)
Black Spanish (vigorous)
Champanel (good growth)
Favorite (ok growth)
Villard Blanc (slow growth)
Seyval (slow growth)
Chambourcin (near death, never flowers)
Norton (near death, never flowers)

[Blanc du Bois and several vinifera vines died within a year or two of planting]

We suspect the ranking reflects the following issue. They trouble some varieites more than others:
Pierce's Disease (obvious)
High soil pH (obvious)
August heat (obvious)
irrigation with salty well water (obvious)
Cotton root rot (possible)
Phyloxera (possible)

We are currently in the 'breeding' phase.   In particular, we are looking for vines that can be harvested in October.  Due to the unique climatic conditions here, a Central Texas vine that ripens in October will be uniquely Texan.  It won't ripen anywhere in California, France or Australia.  They don't have enough hot days and warm nights.

We had 2 new crosses produce fruit in 2012, in each case we got one cluster.  All ripened prior to August 15:
Alphonse d'Serres x op (Ambers)
Munson Centennial seedling #1

We anticipate about 75 new crosses that will produce their first fruit in 2013.  We expect that number of new 'varieties' (or more) to start making fruit every year for the next 5 years.  We will start crossing our best F1 vines in 2014. At some point, the characteristics we are looking for ought to emerge.

The vineyard should expand to 2 or 3 acres by 2015, and potentially grow to a second vineyard in 2016.  We would like to start producing some wine for personal consumption in 2013. We don't anticipate selling anything until sometime after 2016.

New objectives for 2013:
Start second vineyard on the river bank (more room and higher PD pressure)
Expand the Hugelkultur experiment with 2 more rows (for soil enhancement, water management)
Start using organic sprays (dormant oil? stylet oil?)
Do gas chromatography to evaluate flavor profiles of new variety fruit
Get at least 1 graft to survive
Establish a monticola vine
Start the process of following organic standards for growing.  We have been more worried about water than being systemically organic.  Except for drip irrigation, the vines are on their own.  The chemical I'll need to stop using is imidacloprid.  We've been using that to kill root borers that have infested some of the fruit trees in the vineyard.  The last application of imidacloprid was June of 2012.