2020 Spray Schedule

May 2 - Mancozeb
May 12 - Mancozeb + Quintec (quinoxyfen)
May 23 -
May 30 - Abound (azoxystrobin)
June 5 - Mancozeb + Emerald (boscalid)
June 14 - Mancozeb + Quintec
June 24 - Abound (azoxystrobin)
July 1 - Mancozeb + Stature (Dimethomorph) + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)
July 8 - Mancozeb + Quintec + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)
July 16 - Captan + Emerald (boscalid) + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)
July 24 - Captan + Quintec + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)
August 2 - Prophyt + Emerald (boscalid) + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)

August 12 - Abound (azoxystrobin) + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)

2020 Wines - Chapter 2 - Passion Fruit

This is potentially a beautiful wine, one which did not deserve my shabby record-keeping. I was more focused on the jaboticaba wine I had going at the same time, and now I can't find any of my notes. I know that I didn't use any secondary fruit, adjusted the pH up a bit with calcium carbonate, and fermented cool and slow. It looks great - it always starts the color of store-bought orange juice, then lightens up. Thankfully it didn't lose the aroma of passion fruit through the fermentation.

2020 Wines - Chapter 1 - Jaboticaba

I've been saving this fruit for years, literally; freezing every fruit that comes from the two trees. That may explain the short-term outcome. But I'm committed. And I'm committed to a second batch as well, which hopefully will come along more quickly than the first. It went like this:

• Thaw, then crush 3.8kg of fruit. TA 0.83%, pH 3.20, SG 1.030.
• Added 2.2l water, assuming 50% of the fruit volume will contribute to the final volume to just over 1g (some for topping).
• 3ml 10% KMS.
• 465g sugar to ~1.075.
• 1t pectic 
• 0.2g Lallzyme EX
• 1g each Opti Red and Booster Rouge.

No tannin additions. After 24 hours, another 155g sugar to 1.090. The pH was 3.05 and TA 0.97%. RC 212 and step feeding.

I pulled the seeds and skins after 72 hours to eliminate potential for any bitterness. This pic shows where we were mid-fermentation.

The problem is that even with KMS at crush and even before going dry, the wine took this brick color just a couple of days later.

We have about 4 bottles worth. We'll finish this out, but the color instability is a little disappointing. It doesn't taste or smell oxidized. Maybe that's just the color the fruit wants to give. Time will tell, but now it is time to start collecting a new batch of fruit.

Spring has Sprung, 2020 Version

Let's start with the yard. We had plenty of help with the mulch this year and it's all down by the first week of April, thanks to Hunter.

Epimediums

This little loader was not sufficient. Bucket was too small and it didn't easily clear the edge of the truck. We made it work but next year we'll use a real loader again. The grasses are mowed, pre-emergent down, beautyberries and other shrubs pruned. We're seeing 100% survival of the transplanted hellebores in the woodland area, and the epimediums are starting to poke through.

In the greenhouse, most plants look good. We have strawberry guava and grumichama fruit set. Pitomba is flowering as never before. We lost a calamondin, and a couple of the other citrus trees don't look great. The star apples have some marginal leaf necrosis, I wonder if they didn't like so much fertilizer. Hopefully we get them outside soon and they perk up. I took some fall cuttings of grapes, and some of them are pushing leaves.

Frontenac Gris

Speaking of grapes, we have the vineyard pruned. The Chardonel look like a complete loss. They didn't look great last fall but we got 3 gallons of wine from them. It may be the last Chardonel wine we make. My plan is to replace these with Frontenac Gris from cuttings. Aside from the Norton losses to crown gall, we're otherwise in good shape. Foch broke bud 4/9. We replaced some of the Norton with 10 Itasca vines. Itasca is described as having "aromas of pear, quince, violet, melon, minerals along with faint notes of honey." It broke bud already on 4/10. Another 10 Norton were replaced with La Crescent. This grape is used to make off-dry to sweeter wines and is known for "aromas are primarily apricot, peach and citrus." I'm linking the Stark Brothers page here because after the crown gall trouble on the vines from AA Vineyards, I found a new source. Our Frontenac, Vidal and Traminette look strong and I see bud swell on at least 9 Nortons. 

Itasca foreground, row 1; La Crescent row 2

Foch and Traminette

Jake and Taylor were in town for a few weeks after being sidelines due to the pandemic. Jake fished at every opportunity (thanks to Dave, Jane, Betsy, Jorgen, Tom, Jamie). 

Vineyard 2020 Budbreak Log

Foch 4/9
Itasca 4/10
Frontenac 4/12
Vidal 4/15
Traminette 4/12

Finally...Gold!

The Kansas City Cellarmasters 2020 Wine Classic is in the books. I'm starting to figure out what judges like and what performs well in a wine competition. It's not always the wine we prefer to drink in the evening.

Let's start with the bad. Just one. Blackberry. Again. I took careful steps to avoid loss of color and to sweeten this 2017 Blackberry more, but it wasn't enough. "Unbalanced, needs more sugar." "Grassy, no blackberry" was strange to see when truly the only thing that is in this wine is blackberries. "Diesel flavor finish." 9.33. I give up. Blackberry pie anyone?

The rest of my wines at least medaled. Granted, they are pretty generous with medals but this is my best performance to date. The 2017 Zinfandel earned 14.5, good for bronze. Two comments about it being tart. "Overall nice wine."

The 2018 Grenache Rosé got a bronze with 13.67. There was only one comment, "On the thin side." Apparently it was solid if unspectacular, according to these judges. I'm ok with solid.

The Chardonel from 2018 is in my opinion one of my best wines to date. Alas, in competition it was good only for 13.83, bronze. "Notes of melon, flint, citrus, butter." "Crisp, flinty, minerally, apples." Yes, I like this reviewer! "Thin body" "thin, medium finish" from the others.

My 2018 Traminette earned a bronze with 13.5. "Notes of spice, floral." "Low tannins." One sheet with no comments. At least it wasn't thin.

I sent in the 2017 Blueberry which, at that time, I made with some Merlot concentrate. Got one comment that "flavors did not blend well." "Not much blueberry flavor" contrasted with another reviewer, "Fruit forward with Merlot influence." Overall, 15.33 was good for a silver medal.

As an offshoot of the 2017 elderberry, I made a port. To us, this is a delicious dessert drink. I don't have much left actually, but went ahead and sent two bottles in the Fortified/Dessert Wine category. "Nice flavor." "Nice after dinner drink." and then literally two reviewers wrote "Nice dessert wine!" The port earned a silver with 15.50.

I've been fooling around with the 2017 Pear wine for a long time. It was made in two parts, neither went dry, one got some H2S, and, well, it just took a lot of tweaking. All of this for some 7 gallons of wine which to me tastes uncomfortably like apples. I still haven't brought myself to bottle all of it. Well maybe I should, because the judges liked it. "Nice bouquet." "Pleasant" "Very nice, couldn't find much to complain about." "Tastes young." "I think that this will mature into a fine wine." 16.5, silver.

The 2017 Vignoles came from our friend Bill down the road. He couldn't get the mechanical harvester in to pic the grapes so called us. We had to scramble a little bit. It's not my favorite, because to me it's a brassy, tart, in-your-face sort of wine. But the judges really liked it. "Very nice!" "Nice color." "Nice finish." "Nice wine." 17.0. Finally, gold!

Too Much Nice Weather

Last weekend we visited Adam. In the spirit of a budding tropical fruit fanatic, he added a mango and Barbados Cherry, and this weekend he followed up with jaboticaba and avocado. A winter storm forced us to stay an extra day, so we went fishing with Bryan of Southern Thunder Fishing Charters.

Today it's sunny and 55F, the day after the winter solstice. Lisa and I took to the greenhouse in T-shirts for a day of cleanup, repotting, and the remainder of the greenhouse winter insulation.

Jake and I put the film up on the roof at Thanksgiving. It was so difficult that I almost resolved that this would be my last greenhouse winter. But I have a new idea, one that will not require this tiresome effort every year. Stay tuned in the spring for an update.

For now we're going with 0.7mil film again. We finally got the north and south ends sealed up today and it's a better job that the last couple of years, with less infiltration.

The citrus are generally doing well. One lime is in intensive care, but we have good crops of Persian lime, kumquat, calamondin, and satsuma.

I fired up the heat map for a few of the plants which aren't thriving.

Kari didn't do well in the pot over the summer and hasn't done any better in the greenhouse. So we moved it into the ground in the center bed and gave it a couple of good shovels worth of tasty compost.

Loquat is blooming, and a couple of the mangoes look like they are about to bloom as well.

Our forecast is for highs in the 50s to 60s the next several days. I have some wine work to do ahead of the KC Cellarmasters Annual Wine Classic, it will be tough to hide out in the basement when it is so nice outside.