The vines are looking great. We had a solid fruit set and we're back to what looks like a more normal target date for harvest - early October. We set a personal record last year when we didn't even begin picking grapes until October 22. We had never picked any other vintage after October 18.
So here are a couple of pictures. The second shows some rows and you can see how we manage the vineyard. We till every other row and leave a cover crop in the rest. This is one method to manage vigor in the vines - you want your vines to focus on ripening fruit, not growing long shoots.
We do a lot of work on the canopy. We position the shoots vertically in the trellis trying to eliminate overlapping leaves. We want a very thin canopy with the max sun per leaf we can get. We pull leaves on one side of the canopy to let more air circulate around the clusters. This is targeted at reducing the possibility of powdery mildew. And finally we hedge the tops of the shoots - again to slow shoot growth and improve fruit ripening.
The first picture shows some clusters. Since the set was good, we actually have to go through and do a 'green harvest'. The plants in a typical year will set more fruit than our target yield. In Oregon, most premium Pinots are harvested at yields around 2 tons per acre. It's all about ripening and developing flavors. Too high of a yield runs the risk of not ripening enough at harvest. So we're in the process right now of cutting off clusters to get to our 2 tons per acre.
So far so good, but Oregon harvests always come down to the weather in the last week of September and the month of October.
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