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.