Reply for Todd on Indigenous Vines

Hello Todd!

Hey! It works! The media is SO full of hyperbole these days I
even use it to get my point across sometimes!! Hyperbole CAN help a
cause if it is used with humor and tongue-in-cheek language. It can
be dangerous when used seriously with the intent to harm. I suppose
the only folks my rant might tarnish are the Eastern vinifera
vineyard owners, but I suspect they are too well insulated from hybrid
grapes to care. I am anti-vinifera, but only because it is so poorly
suited to Eastern growing conditions. I can tolerate the wines from
it.

I am serious that anyone with enough space to grow a vine can
breed grapes. A shovel and a rake are exactly what Ephraim Bull had
at hand when he created Concord - the most influential grape in
Eastern history. If you want to make the grape to replace the market
position of Cabernet Sauvignon you'll likely never do it, but if you
want good grapes you made yourself anyone can do it. If this is being
disingenuous to anyone it is the experts of 'grape variety control' at
the big breeding programs who have great vested career interest in
making their varieties the only ones available to growers. The last
thing they want are grape growers getting it in their heads to make
their OWN varieties from their local grapes (like it was in the late
1800's). The growers easily could, but imagine the losses to sales of
the latest hot new grapes from "X Breeding Program"!

Yes, I grant you that calling vinifera an invasive species is
hyperbole, but it got you to read it and think about it!! The media
is rife with this mechanism these days. It IS cheezy. But, then, I
find the boring, vinous plonk being made from these grapes and sold
across the East as "interesting, delicious, exciting, and worth our
high price" equally cheezy. They really are not worth the fungicides
sprayed on them, in my opinion.

It is also true that the Regional Wine Week's usage of "local"
did not mean "indigenous", but my vision of regional wine, food and
culture is one where the unique identity of those things springs from
a place and stays there. Wine in America very much follows on the
coat tails of fast food. Customers have even developed a canned
notion of what the experience of "going to a winery" should be! They
also expect to find their familiar store vinifera names on the
bottles. You can blow the smoke of terroir all you want, but this is
not regional flavor.

It has long been said by breeders of disease- and pest-resistant
grapes that the only thing we really need from vinifera is the
self-fertility trait since they offer so little else to a vine that is
resilient in the Eastern climate. Now, I'll give you that an import
may become a local flavor, but it has to survive in that location on
its own merits because if it has to be babied along it will eventually
die out in the intervals between interested growers. This is what has
happened in France where the old American Clinton and Noah varieties
(labrusca-based!) have survived in local enclaves and become popular
and part of the local culture since their introduction in the 1860's.
Luckily, these vines are incredibly more disease resistant than the
"approved" vinifera and propagate freely from cuttings growing on
their own roots. Yet, they are still not indigenous, and given the
global transportation of disease, Europe will never have an
"indigenous viticulture" because they have no resident wild vines to
build such a viticulture from that could survive without fungcides or
grafting. Eastern North Americans do have such wild vines, however,
and that is my point. They should be worked with, built on,
experimented with, and used for wine to finally find out what they are
capable of.

I've heard the "people hate hybrid/labrusca wine" chant so many
times I had to try selling some of it myself to see. What I find are
people hungry for flavor that have a sweet tooth. They have a hard
time finding satisfaction in industrial vinifera wines and are excited
to try my wines from back crosses with our local wild stocks. They
are shocked on first try but invigorated by the idea that the wine is
at least half from local wild vines. They live here. These are their
local wild stocks. They want to experience wines from them and come
back for more. I'll give you a simple definition of an "indigenous"
wine variety as having half or more of its genetic makeup from local
wild stocks and that is capable of being grown from a dormant cutting
without grafting and able to survive intervals of disinterest without
care (i.e. no spray). This is arbitrary, granted, but there is no
definition out there to use. Note that this definition allows a
variety to be indigenous at the county, state, national and
continental levels, but not every variety indigenous to the US or
Virginia is indigenous in my county.

Regards, -CA

P.S. Do you have a vineyard? If not, get one and do all the work.
You'll develop a whole new view on these things.

What is Local Wine? Is Vitis vinifera Sustainable in the East?

I recently found out that this week is "Regional Wine Week" here in
the eastern 47 sates! The event has its own website at:
http://www.drinklocalwine.com/ . I tried to get the site owners to
link my blog, but they said I had to write something new. Since I am
ALL ABOUT local wine, I figured why not?
 
First, take a look at the blog post "18 regional grapes to try before
you die" by Richard Leahy at
http://www.drinklocalwine.com/18-regional-grapes-to-try-before-you-die.html
. This is a very interesting and informed look at some "regional"
grapes used in wine, but I have a problem with it. My problem with it
is the same problem I have with nearly all wine grown in America and
nearly all of the world: it is being made from grapes that ARE NOT
INDIGENOUS to the localities they are being grown. Essentially all
wine grapes are not grown in their place of origin. A few vinifera
are being grown for wine, no doubt, somewhere in Eurasia, a few New
York and Upper Midwest varieties are grown where they originated in
those regions (some listed by Mr. Leahy), Norton is now grown again in
Virginia, some of T.V. Munson's grapes are grown in Texas, and Lenoir
and Herbemont may be lurking somewhere in Georgia, but probably
99.999% of all wine grown in the world is being made from grape
varieties imported from somewhere else! The greatest offenders on
the list of "exotic species" of "invasive grape varieties" are the
famed Vitis vinifera varieties, including five of the grapes listed by
Richard Leahy in his review of "regional grapes". Yes, perhaps they
are being grown in those regions, but they are very much NOT from
those regions NOR indigenous. Richard tows the endless party line of
praise heaped on Dr. Konstantin Frank since he proved vinifera could
be forced to grow in the Finger Lakes, but I do not. I think Dr.
Frank may be responsible for more damage to Eastern sustainable wine
growing than any other person. He influenced many, many vineyard
owners by showing that Eurasian vinifera viticulture could (and by
suggesting they should) be transplanted to eastern North America. Yes
they could, and were, but at what cost?

The cost was enormous in sustainability terms. Vitis vinifera grapes
are phenomenally poorly adapted to the overall moist and warm eastern
North America summer and winter cold. Having evolved in the absence
of all the fungi (especially powdery mildew, downy mildew and black
rot) and pests (especially phylloxera - the bug that took down French
wine growing in the 1860's) that are present everywhere east of the
Rocky Mountains, the Vitis vinifera have no natural resistance to
these environmental pressures. How can they survive here? The answer
is chemicals and grafting (and burial in winter to survive the cold!).
The fungicides allow the vinifera to survive the scourge's of disease
and grafting on wild American root stocks allows them to survive
phylloxera on their roots. Chemicals also help reduce damage from
other insects like the grape berry moth and grape root borer, weed
infestation under the vines, mites feeding on leaves, and even can
"reduce predation" by birds and mammals. Take a look online at the
various spray guides offered by eastern extension agencies and wonder
why there are so many sprays listed (e.g. in Virginia:
http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/456/456-017/Section-3_Grapes-1.pdf ; others
that can be found at these links: http://pss.uvm.edu/grape/Links/ ;
see also "The Challenges of 2003" in Mark Chien's article at:
http://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/?go=getArticle&dataId=29788). In
short, by growing the least adapted varieties of grapes (the vinifera)
in the East, we have set up a system of maximum susceptibility to
almost every environmental pressure on the grapes. We have countered
this with the tools of the 'Green Revolution'
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution - especially the
'Environmental Impact' section). We still are uncertain about (or
unwilling to face) the human health impacts of this approach to
agriculture (see the 'Health impact' section of the last Wiki
reference).

In addition to the unsuitability of the vinifera to the East is the
enormous effort it takes to care for them. While Concord grapes are
grown along the Great Lakes and muscadines in eastern North Carolina
with minimal spray and machine harvest, the weakling vinifera require
grafting, careful trellising, 4-5 times as many trips (or more) with
the spray machine (see:
http://www.sites.ext.vt.edu/newsletter-archive/viticulture/08marchapril/08marchapril.html#III),
shoot positioning, cluster thinning, and netting - in many cases
provided by non-resident, low wage, migrant laborers from Mexico who
were displaced by NAFTA and the destruction of Mexican agriculture by
the north's agricultural-industrial-financial-university complex (see
'Hard Tomatoes Hard Times' by Jim Hightower for a review of the early
stages of the complex's development:
http://www.amazon.com/Hard-tomatoes-hard-times-Preliminary/dp/B0006C6S2G/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1318436421&sr=8-5).
These workers struggle to find work because they have NO PLACE to be.
Like the indigenous grapes of the East, the migrant labor force needs
its home to thrive in the manner it is best adapted to. No-one does
well living on the road all the time.

So what are alternatives to vinifera in the East? First, we have to
dig deep in our wine drinking souls and ask the hardest question: WHY
DO WE DRINK VINIFERA WINES? Here is a can of worms that can explode
into encyclopedic length ruminations! In short, I think it boils down
mostly to what is available and what we learn about wine. Wine
instructors, books, classes, guides, reviews, etc, etc, etc, virtually
all consider only vinifera wines with possible footnotes to other
kinds of grapes (often disparaged as 'hybrids' or 'labruscas').
Therefore, we only learn about vinifera wines and their stories of old
steeped in the seeming validity of time. Then we go to any wine shop,
store, government outlet, or winery and what do we mostly find? Vitis
vinifera wines! Once we get to this point we usually stop our thought
experiment and simply conclude that these are the correct grapes for
wine, they are the best or others would be used, and the experts know
best. But WAIT A SECOND! Isn't there a huge conflict of interest in
saying these are the only things worth buying when they are the things
you are selling and you have too much of them??? Ever heard the
phrases "name recognition" or "bandwagon marketing"? The people
selling most of this stuff in the USA made over a HALF BILLION GALLONS
of it last year
(http://www.wineinstitute.org/resources/statistics/article83 )!! No
wonder "wine choice" is being stuffed down our throats like fast food
burgers! What do you do with a HALF BILLION GALLONS of wine if you
can't move the inventory? Big agribusiness holds this inventory and
they want YOU to drink it! This means we have to continue our thought
process beyond the conclusion that vinifera wines are correct, best,
and that we should believe the experts and advertising. Let's see...

A long time ago, well maybe not so long ago, but before the
mid-1800's, there were no sprays. It wasn't until America sent
powdery mildew and black rot to Europe that sulfur and Bordeaux
mixture were used to control the diseases. In those "pre-spray" days,
how did any Americans make wine? It was made possible by the
varieties of grapes they had available which popped up in their back
yards seemingly spontaneously. To the lower James River estuary of
Virginia, Congressman Theodorick Bland brought a grape from Virginia's
Eastern Shore that later came to bear his name. The 'Red Bland' as it
was known went on to yield the Norton, Cunningham and Woodson grapes
of central Virginia. In central Georgia the Warren and Lenoir grapes
were found and later bred to make Favorite in Missouri. The Warren
was later used by Nicholas Herbemont in the 1830's in his successful
wine growing venture near Columbia, SC, so later took on Herbemont's
name. The famous Catawba grape was likely found on Burney Ridge just
east of modern day Fletcher, NC, in northern Henderson County near the
Asheville airport. The Alexander grape that became the basis of J.J.
DuFour's excursion into wine growing on the Ohio River at Vevay, IN,
was displaced there from its home near Philadelphia. The ranks of
these pre-spray grapes are large and many still exist. They exist
because they carry survivability to eastern conditions. In the case
of Norton, it can produce excellent fruit in dry years with no spray.
Many of the other pre-spray cultivars contain Vitis labrusca in their
pedigrees and benefit greatly from some fungicidal prophylaxis just
before and after bloom, but not the weekly dowsing through the entire
season many vinifera vineyards in the East get. Oh, you heard
labrusca-based wines are 'foxy' and for newbies? FORGET IT! Catawba
and Isabella have been around longer than Agoston Haraszthy
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoston_Haraszthy )!! Do you hate
Welch's grape juice? Ever smell a British fox ripped open during a
fox hunt as the original users meant the term? Every have a Lake Erie
Delaware, Diamond, Catawba, Dutchess, Diana, Agawam or other
labruscana wine? Listen to THIS bandwagon call: MY CUSTOMERS LOVE
THESE WINES, and maybe one American knows what a British fox's scent
gland smells like so lose the 'foxy' term!!! Norton makes lovely wine
as do Lenoir, Herbemont, Favorite, Clinton, Eumelan, Noah; Munson's
Extra, XLNTA, Mericadel, Captain, and many others; as well as my new
grapes indigenous to central Virginia and northern Ohio. The quality
for wine is there in our wild stocks and is waiting to come out.

Anyway, what can be done? Here we are, saddled with an invasive
species infestation of monoculture Vitis vinifera in our vineyards
across the East and very few people are thinking about it critically.
Well, cut off the labor, shut down the trucks, make diesel expensive,
warm the climate, or some similar disruption and these vinifera
outlets may well fail because their precious, weakling vinifera won't
be able to get the inputs they need to survive. This is the time when
we will finally re-think eastern North American wine growing. We will
no doubt scramble for varieties that can make wine with minimal spray
and don't take endless labor to cultivate. There is another approach
to this old way, however, and it was clearly stated by the true hero
of American grape growing; Thomas Volney Munson. He wrote it all down
for you to read in his "Foundations of American Grape Culture," and
now it is available for free on Google books and in hard copy at the
Munson Viticulture & Enology Center in Grayson County, Texas, at:
http://www.tvmunson.org/books.htm . Self published in 1909, Munson's
almost-forgotten contribution is a simple guide to remaking a true
INDIGENOUS American viticulture and wine industry. The basic premise
is that individual operators and families operate small vineyards and
wineries based on their own wine grapes bred from their local wild
flora. Munson tells us how to make the grapes. He did it, I have
done it, and any fool with a shovel and rake can do it for the cost of
trying. Take your wild grapes, cross them with already disease
resistant, large cluster and large berry, self-fertile cultivars, save
the seed and grow it out, and you will have your own locally adapted
varieties for truly unique-in-the-world wine that is using the long
evolutionary treasure of disease and pest resistance held in your
local wild vines that is unique to your place. We really do not need
industrial wines, their marketing, and all the experts making livings
off their lore to make the wines best suited to our place. The
marketers and experts should go outdoors and grow some grapes and make
some wine.

We simply have to move beyond the socially constructed
paradigm of what wine should be and experience what can be. Whenever
possible, we need to drink local wines made by small producers from
disease- and pest-resistant grapes grown in our neighborhood. All the
better if they bred the grapes themselves!

As Marty Stouffer would say (sort of), "Enjoy Our Wild American
Wines!" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Stouffer)
Cheers, C. Ambers

WSJ article on breeding fruit hybrids

Hi Patrick,

Sorry for being a broken record.

From what I see, folks are simply burned out on mass marketing
and merchandising. They've been sold mass produced stuff that turns
out to be bland and somehow disfunctional so many times they are
getting willing to trek out on their own without the "help" of
advertisers or Wally World to try things themselves. Lots of them
feel local pride and seek local producers of many things to get over
the mass market blues. I know that a fruit grower can sell their own
productions. I do it. People love the local connection. Most are
willing to pay a bit more for local products but not a lot more. This
is a major challenge to making a living off such a venture. If ag
subsidies flowed to the small end of the farming spectrum instead of
to the large end, things could be a lot different. I meet a lot of
people who would like to live on a farm and make a living farming but
can't in today's market. You could support a LOT of communities and
farms with a billion dollars in subsidies. Wiki reports about 20
billion in current direct farm subsidy payments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy . Let's see:
20,000,000,000/50,000 = 400,000 farms subsidized at $50K or 800,000
farms subsidized at $25K direct payments. If all government support
is really 180 billion/yr as the Canadians estimate, and it was all
channeled to small farms, you could support 7,200,000 family farms at
$25K total subsidy or 4,000,000 farms at $45K total subsidy! That
might get some new fruits out there - and maybe some people, too!!

Thanks for the link!

Cliff

*************************************

WSJ article on breeding fruit hybrids
Wed Sep 7 11:01:38 EDT 2011

This may be of interest - Today's Wall Street Journal has an article that
describes a private fruit breeder's work on stone fruits(plums, etc.). What
I thought was especially interesting was the author's observation that
different segments of the population prefer different flavors:

"Kingsburg has identified fruits that appeal to specific age groups and
palates. For example, after visiting stores and talking with produce
managers, Mr. Spain found children favor a Pluot that is a little sour with
a green skin. People in their 30s prefer something with layers of fruit
flavors and a mottled color. Older people like a milder, traditional-tasting
fruit, with not-too-tart red or black skin."

I suspect the same might be true with fresh grapes and/or wines, so there
seems to be room for niche products, as Cliff has so often mentioned.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904900904576552543026705926.html

Cabin bicolor hybrids

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 8:51 AM
Subject: Cabin bicolor hybrids

BicoBuffs,

    Back in the early summer I posted a couple of pics of green
berries on my newly fruiting Cabin bicolor hybrids with SV23-512 and
Veeblanc.  There was some confusion that they were white, but I posted
a reply explaining that they were still hard and green.  Attached are
pics of the "ripe" fruit.  I put "ripe" in quotes because this first
fruit had a hard season with my getting overwhelmed by the heat,
humidity, and incredibly rank growth due to a very even 1" of rain a
week with the heat.  These poor things were shaded on both sides with
thick growth from the top of the 6' VSP trellis that extended down to
the ground and beyond.  The vines are STILL  growing, and the 5.1"
(yes, 5.1") of rain we got last night out of the TS Lee remnant will
not help matters.  The fruit on these vines suffered heavy casualties
from bunch stem necrosis, but I think the brown marmorated stink bugs
are to blame because they love the shady, secluded places and once
they poked a stem, fungus could take hold in the rachii fast in the
humid environment under there.  So, the pics show what I got, still
very interesting.  Chemistry to come.  Note, I used the 08-33-10
pollen on quite a few back crosses to aestivalis and aesti-hybrids.
Should be very interesting seed out of those crosses.  Both of these
are self-fertile.

Regards, Cliff

LindDatt Rouge and Blanc

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 8:24 AM
Subject: LindDatt Rouge and Blanc

Hi All,

     Here's a couple pics of some fairly odd grapes from a cross
(06-59) I did of Lindley X Dattier St. Vallier.  Delicious pulp but
the thick skins will dry your mouth out like powdered grape tannin if
you chew them!  Low acidity in the 0.4-0.45% range, Brix about 19 and
pH's above 3.60.  These would make great pollen donors on wild grapes
to boost tannin and skin thickness.  Only the leaves on the lowest 2'
of cane are funky like the one shown on the LindDatt Rouge.  I'd call
them seeded table grapes but for the tannic skins.

Enjoy, Cliff

Fwd: Ambers 06-120-4 = 'Carol Mae Ambers' pics

This is a test of posting emails I send to the grape breeder's list
run by Lon Rombough. Since that liost is private, I though it might
be interesting if I echo these on the CZ blog. Here we go....

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: +++++++++++++++++++
Date: Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 1:13 PM
Subject: Ambers 06-120-4 = 'Carol Mae Ambers' pics
To: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hi All,

    I went ahead and picked the seedling vine of my 'Carol Mae
Ambers' on Monday.  It still needed to hang a bit, but I wanted to
harvest it before any more clusters suffered bunch stem necrosis due
to infection at stink bug puncture sites.  Brix were 18.5, pH at 3.3,
and TA about 1.2%.  Tartrates precipitated in the crushing container
as is usual for these aesti-hybrids.  The stinkers can really screw up
fruit in shaded vines where they like to hang out inside the clusters.
 I've seen several with their probosci inserted into the rachis of
clusters.  Anyway, check out the pics of this remarkable little grape
from a very old fashioned cross (bicolor X Diamond).  Looks like I'll
get a couple of bottles of wine from the fruit I grew.  The color
looks remarkably good, too, and the must had a nice mouth feel.  The
fresh crushed aroma is a bit more grapey-welchy than Norton, but it
seems to volatilize and become simply fruity very quickly.  That's me
in pic #1.  Good thing I got my hair cut so the gray isn't so obvious!

Cheers, Cliff

Another vintage past, getting ready for the next.  The cycle of the small farm winery is nothing like 'modern life' is anymore.  I see the muscadines weeping when they're cut and the winter crocus blooming and the willow's bark and tiny buds greening and I know the explosion of spring growth is just around the corner.  Now that my occupation (farmer) isn't even counted by the US Census anymore, I always wonder what we would do if (when?) something bad happens and the majority of us living in urban environments couldn't just go down to the store or restaurant and buy food.  Where would we get it?  Could we provide for ourselves?  Do we know how to do anything besides watching television, surfing the internet, talking on cell phones, driving, using MS Office, and killing time on Facebook?  Please make this the year you learn something about where your food comes from and try to make something for yourself, especially food.  Try to 'feel the hills' as you ride through your life instead of putting it 'on cruise' and jamming it along at a constant rate.  If the Amish driver ran his horse like we "English" ride our cars and lives, the horse would be dead in one trip!  Dare to step out of your insulated "bubble life" and meet new people, discuss ideas without being angry, and "do unto others as you wish they would do to you!"  Most of all, TURN OFF THE TALKING HEADS telling you how to think and think for yourself - including the background study really knowing a subject requires.  Don't be a lazy American expecting 'the good life' to fall on your doorstep.  Learn, love, tolerate and give to the world instead of thinking you are the center of the universe deserving to profit from your every action.

Wow!  How's that for a rant on Americanism!!!  Now to the vineyard.  I may remember 2010 as the vintage that Global Warming came home to roost in Virginia.  It was a very hot year (most varieties ripened 2-3 weeks early) and very cyclic in precipitation.  The season started hot in March while I was finishing pruning.  A whole week was above 80F with at least one day at 90F!  By the time I finished pruning some vines had 4" long shoots.  The moisture levels were good into June, but then it was very dry through July into August, the period when my grapes are growing rapidly and getting ready to ripen.  In August the rains returned and many cracking susceptible varieties split, requiring rapid harvest to save them for wine.  As it was I lost half my Vidal Blanc to cracking.  The rains then held into September when another dry spell happened during late harvest.  That worked out fine.

I did extensive bird netting in 2010 using round bale netting which served to protect the fruit well and allow the reds to ripen more fully.  I was very pleased with the results and am currently testing leaving the bale netting out in the vineyard rolled up under the lowest wire through the year.  In my 'one man show' this is a major labor saving step.  So far the netting looks as good as new with no photodegradation.   If I somehow manage to go three years with the same netting, it would be a major triumph in cost-effective bird control.  Even two years is a huge savings by cutting the expense per year in half.

New hybrid fruit was everywhere across Chateau Z Vineyard during the 2010 harvest season.  Instead of posting too much here, I direct you to the Virtual Vineyard at: http://www.chateau-z.com/gpage.html where you can select the '2010 Virtual Vineyard' link to see all the photos and data I collected over the season.  Any variety with a numbered identification of the form YY-XXX-vv is one of my hybrids.  YY is the year of the cross, XXX is the cross number and vv is the vine number from the cross.  All of my cross information is listed at: http://www.chateau-z.com/zhybrids.html .  This is where you can find the pedigree of each cross.

One special beauty that fruited for the first time this year was my 06-92-1 hybrid from a cross of my 'Panther Falls Road tannic aestivalis' with 'Suffolk Red'.  Here is the fruit:

This grape makes a really delicious rose' with just a slight hint of Delaware flavor.  A true treasure from a wild vine's seed!

The 06-92-1's sister, 06-92-2, is also a fascinating grape in that it appears to be very similar to the historic variety 'Red Bland' which I mentioned last year in looking at my 06-114-1 which also looks like how the 'Red Bland' was described.  I now favor the 06-92 type cross (aestivalis X labruscana) for a 'Red Bland' analog because of the overwhelmingly aestivalis character of its offspring 'Norton'.  Here's the fruit on the 06-92-2:

Back crossing this kind of grape with a wild aestivalis selection will make the offspring 75% aestivalis which is pretty much what 'Norton' looks like.  What would be fascinating (and I intend to try it) would be to pollinate a wild aestivalis with the 06-114-1 'Foxy Vixen' based labruscana (as I suggested last year, but all attempts last year failed), select a self-fertile, then pollinate another aestivalis with that new seedling.  These should also have a high enough aestivalis content to be 'Norton Class', but the addition of cordifolia in the labruscana grandparent would be interesting to follow into the grandchildren.

There's lots to do in 2011!  Get outdoors, grow some seeds, hike the forests and parks, get out of your house and car, and let go of the stress the media is pumping you full of.  Turn it all off.  Unplug.  "Get back to Nature" as they used to say!

Welcome to 2010!

Well, 2009 is history and now we wade through the tax season in preparation for a new growing year! I put over 2 tons of fruit from my dinky vineyard through the winery last Fall, only slightly less than in 2008 even with much heavier cluster thinning. Normal rainfall works miracles! The 2009 harvest is what I would consider "normal" with good, steady rains through July with plenty of good weather from August through November to allow harvest of my many varieties. Temperatures were moderate, overall, and while I did see a pretty good downy mildew load on secondary shoots, I had no fungal problems with the fruit and primary foliage. I let my new 2008 seedlings suffer the downy mildew in full and the 800-so remaining have proven their resistance from a pretty bad infection.

In addition to my normal Saturday sales at the Lynchburg, VA, Community Market during 2009, I participated in their Green Market Wednesdays from July through December. Folks seemed to be in better economic spritis toward the holidays than they had been most of the year. Hopefully the home financing debacle is winding down and everyone can get back to enjoying the good stuff at the market. It remains to be seen to what extent I will join in the Wednesday markets in 2010. With my ever increasing harvests of grapes, muscadines, apples, peaches, pears, plums, elderberries, blueberries, raspberries, vegetables, mulberries, figs, and now black currants to go in my apple wine; I am finding less and less time to spare during the week. Add the absurd paperwork load of running a farm winery and dealing with the Virginia Dept. of Taxation (which can't seem to make their website serve the taxpayers of this state, but rather incriminate them at every turn), and I am about as full up with the paper side of this business as I care to be.

Wines from Chateau Z Vineyard continue to be received well by buyers and there is good inventory of the main wines still to sell. I hope to join in the Thomas Jefferson Wine Festival this Fall at Poplar Forest, and possibly another festival or two, which will help keep the cellar from being overrun with bottled wine.

2009 saw first fruit on a large number of my 2005 and 2006 hybrid productions, and it was VERY exciting. Most of the newly fruting vines are Vitis aestivalis hybrids, and the fruit characteristics are spectacular considering this is a first generation from wild mother vines. The flavors are strongly dependant on the amount of Vitis labrusca in the pedigree of the hybrids, with those having high (25%) labrusca in their pedigree tasting much like the old line hybrid Eumelan which has a Welchy but spicy flavor. On the other end of the spectrum are unbelievably neutral red wine grapes from crosses of the aestivalis with the neutral French hybrids like Villard Blanc and Rayon d'Or. Wines from these grapes retains the aestivalis spicy character without any Welchiness. In between these end members, the flavors are very fruity but not what you would identify as a Welch's grape juice flavor. Most tend to a flavor approximating Norton with its difficult to describe fruitiness. Unlike Norton, however, almost all of my aestivalis hybrids are light red in color and need long hang time on the vine to reduce their acidity levels and gain what color they can. Here's and example of a cross of my High Peak Upper V. aestivalis X Vanessa (a seedless labruscana table grape):


and here is an example of a cross of my High Peak Upper V. aestivalis X Lakemont (a seedless labruscana table grape):

and here is an example of a cross of my High Peak Lowr V. aestivalis X Gewurztraminer:



In addition to the aesti-hybrids, I also saw fruit on my first cross to the Foxy Vixen, itself a wild hybrid of Vitis cordifolia X Vitis labrusca. This new grape is my 06-114-1 and was a cross of the Foxy Vixen with Elmer Swenson's Edelweiss. The new vine is very exciting because it is the closest analog I have found to the descriptions of the extinct Red Bland grape which was the mother of the Norton grape. This year I will cross the 06-114-1 with various aestivalis mothers and see if anything like Norton results. Given my experiences with my new aesti-hybrids, I don't expect the aestivalis X 06-114-1 seedlings to match Norton because the will likely lack the deep color of Norton. I do hope the fruit quality will be similar, however, giving us at least a glimpse of whether the 06-114-1 works like the Red Bland did as the mother of Norton. I also managed to make a LOT of seed on the Foxy Vixen with my two Chasselas selections (DVIT373 & DVIT689) which should be much more like the Red Bland than the 06-114-1. Still, the 06-114-1 gives a first good look at what the offspring from a large berry/cluster, white pollinator on the Foxy Vixen will look like. Here's the 06-114-1:


Some really fun fruit I saw for the first time in 2009 was from hybrids I made with the old line labruscana grape called Lindley bred by Edward Rogers in the 1850's. A couple of the seedlings of Lindley pollinated by Himrod made fruit and the third vine has the biggest berries of any tender labruscana in my vineyard. Columbian Imperial has bigger berries, but they are very tough skinned with rubbery pulp. The grape breeders on Lon Rombough's list server came up the the name "Miakota" (the power of the moon) for my new grape. It is pistillate like Lindley making it easy to hybridize on, and it has the most delicious fruit with delicately crunchy skins and pulp that melts in the mouth with only a couple seeds per berry. Another exciting cross turned out to be Rogers' Lindley X Rayon d'Or, AKA Albert Seibel's #4986. This group of seedlings ranged from green-white to gold to red with medium to large berries and flavors that are out of this world. The wines would be similar tothose from Romulus, Cayuga or Melody. I have named the #11 seedling Rayon d'Colorado (the ray of the color red) for its beautiful red fruit and the #2 seedling will be named after our friend Debbie Kasper, possibly using her maiden name. Here are these vines:

06-62-3 = Miakota:
06-66-11 = Rayon d'Colorado:
06-66-2 (tentatively = Debbie VanSchyndel):
Well, that's about enough for now. Stay tuned to www.chateau-z.com for the news hybrid seed list from 2009 and the 2009 Virtual Vineyard which I should be getting up soon after TAXES ARE DONE! In the mean time, think about this:

WOW what a Spring! Things were hopping around Chateau Z Vineyard. I installed eight new 250' long trellises to plant new hybrid grape seeds along. The 2008 breeding season was phenomenally successful with about 10,000 seeds produced from 231 crosses. The new seedlings are still small but starting to get going after allowing downy mildew to its worst to thin out the weaklings. I expect many to reach the trellis by Fall. I did a lot of crosses using Vitis aestivalis and Vitis bicolor (summer grapes) as mothers. Quite a few of my 2005 and 2006 hyrids with summer grapes are bearing fruit this year and so far things look very promising. One cross with Lakemont has nearly 10" long clusters. Others with Vanessa, Villard Blanc, Pocklington and Vidal are equally promising. These will all show up in the 2009 Virtual Vineyard at chateau-z.com .

This year's Vitis aestivalis pollinations went badly because of rain. It has been dry lately during the Vitis cinerea bloom, however, so I am expecting good set and lots of seed from those crossings. I am focusing on using male Vitis aestivalis pollen on my cinerea mothers to continue work on possible Norton precursors. I collected flowers from a new male Vitis aestivalis on Father Judge Road near here just so I could use the name! I did successfully pollinate my Foxy Vixen (labrusca X cordifolia) with Chasselas this Spring, so I am excited to get growing those out next year.

Speaking of rain, my reduced spray schedule has been holding up well even though it has been pretty wet since bud break. There is a fair amount of downy mildew about, but Captan seems to be keeping it from getting to dangerous levels. All the fruit is clean, save for a very few berries on clusters behind leaves with black rot. This is acceptable given the millions of berries out there. Over all the crop is still in great shape and looks to exceed previous years once again, even given the thinning of Seyval, Vidal and Chambourcin by 1/4-1/3 of the clusters present. I should have enough Rayon d'Or to make a varietal this Fall and if the critters don't get into the Wine King too much I hope to make it straight, too. My Favorite grafts did well, so I will have more Matohe in 2009. I'll probably add any of my own aestivalis hybrids that taste in line, as well. Some other exisiting grapes to fruit for me the first time this year are Yates, Eleven Point, Hidalgo, Alicante Bouschet, Keuka, Croton, BR12, Couderc 4401, Couderc 1202, Aramon, and Rebecca. Lots and lots of my 2006 labruscana hybrids will fruit, especially those using Lindley as mother. There is a Lindley X Himrod (LindRod) out there looking exceptionally promising as well as some Lindley X Rayon d'Or (LindRay) seedlings.

Wine bottling of the 2008's is about half completed with most of the small lots in the jug. I am bottling just over 450 gallons this year as 15 wines! That's a lot of hand label placement! New this year are Vixen Noir from my cordifolia hybrids, Blankenship Black Muscadine from Jerry Blankenship's Black Beauty grapes, 3-D White from Diamond-Delaware-Dutchess (thank Lucie Morton for the "3D" concept), Noir de Blancs - the black from the whites: white grapes made into red wine with teinturier grapes, Lynchburger = Landot Noir, and Rivermont Blanc = Villard Blanc, Vidal and Seyval. Prices on most offerings have been reduced $2 to help move inventory and get the wines better in line with daily dinner fare prices and the direction of the economy.

Rebecca (my wife) and I went to the Summer Solstice Festival put on by the Rebec Winery folks last weekend. It was a very nicely organized function and well executed. The new festival facilities at the old livestock market are well suited to these activities. Great work Katie, Svet, Richard and all the other folks and volunteers at Rebec. Hopefully I'll have enough inventory next year to join in the fun!

Well, that's about all for now. Stop by the Lynchburg Farmer's Market Saturdays 7:00AM-2:00PM to get your hands on some chateau Z Vineyard wine and load your trunk up with fresh veggies, meats and crafts! Pick up breakfast and/or lunch while you're at it!


One parting bit of news. My petition to the ATTB for a new American Viticultural Area called the "Blue Ridge Foothills of Central Virginia" passed into the next stage of handling in which the ATTB writes it into the form to go into the Federal Register and posts it for comment for 60 days. If all goes smoothly, the AVA area shown in blue in the map above of central VA may become a reality! It lies southwest of the existing Monticello AVA down to the Roanoke River and extends from the 2,000' contour on the east face of the Blue Ridge out to include areas of 800' elevation.