AMA - Winery/Vineyards, Agriculture, Environmental Issues
Specialist · Midland, TX · Member since 2018 · 198 posts · 148 votes
AMA - Winery/Vineyards, Agriculture, Environmental Issues
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Jay HinrichsBusiness Member
Real Estate Consultant · Summerlin, NV · Member since 2014 · 45k+ posts · 66k+ votes
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- Specialist · New York City, NY · Member since 2020 · 6 posts · 0 votes5y
- Specialist · Midland, TX · Member since 2018 · 198 posts · 148 votes5y
- 5yJay HinrichsBusiness MemberReal Estate Consultant · Summerlin, NV · Member since 2014 · 45k+ posts · 66k+ votes
- Specialist · Midland, TX · Member since 2018 · 198 posts · 148 votes5y
Just some neat photos from today, the last truck in our first batch of new tanks, some foggy fruit framing fermentation furnishings. That Tempranillo is good to us!
- Specialist · Midland, TX · Member since 2018 · 198 posts · 148 votes5y
Things are slowing down in the vineyard as cold weather puts everything into dormancy, but things are chugging along with the FermForge project! Working on a Phase I site assessment for commercial development next week and a wetland delineation tomorrow. Both are always interesting out here with all of the oil and gas activity.
My dog decided to check in on things with me the other day but was more interested in sun bathing.
- Specialist · Yavapai County AZ · Member since 2018 · 15 posts · 6 votes5y
- Specialist · Midland, TX · Member since 2018 · 198 posts · 148 votes5y
Morning @Andy Hains! Excellent question. Texas is a big place, so the answer varies based on location and cultural practices.
Here at our base of ops at Canted County Vineyards (far southern end of the TX High Plains AVA), we are seeing minimal damage in just two varieties (merlot in VSP and chardonnay in our experimental high wire). Both had some primary bud damage, but not too much. That's comes out to a small % of damage to only about 2.4% of our acreage. Bud break overall has been uneven in timing, but that is typical for Texas and everything tends to even out after a couple months growing. Expecting pretty typical yields this year (4-6 tons/acre in VSP/premium acreage; 6-10+ tons/acre in 4th leaf high wire before thinning that down to 5-6 tons so they can focus on vegetative growth for one more year). I think we could hang 8-10 tons pretty easily on our high wire tempranillo, for example, and still put out really quality fruit. We still want to knock production back for one more year to have them focus on vegetative growth though. I'd like them to be very resilient to future damage and don't want to trade longevity tomorrow for production today.
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As far as cultural practices to prevent damage, this event fell more into the "winter kill" class of cold damage rather than frost in my area (Texas High Plains AVA) as most vines were still dormant. We typically will prune (especially early budding varieties) just as buds start to swell. This will "reset the clock" on the vines and delay bud break for some time and put us even further into the safety of early-to-mid-April. Other than that we did not do much. Some folks up here in the High Plains AVA also saw more damage than we did, but it greatly depended on variety, topography, and when they pruned.
_____________________In almost every other AVA in the state, vines were either on the verge of bud break or had already, and damage ranged from minimal to catastrophic based on variety and topography. Some vineyards got nearly wiped out and have vine death, others are pushing secondary or tertiary buds or at least some trunk suckers (chance to re-train at least). The other AVAs do not typically get low temps like we do and many vines had never experienced anything nearly like this and weren't acclimated or hardened to it. I think many of the vineyards in the hill country will live but have a rough year in 2021. They had a fairly gradual decline (several days) to their low temps.
- Specialist · Midland, TX · Member since 2018 · 198 posts · 148 votes5y
- Specialist · Midland, TX · Member since 2018 · 198 posts · 148 votes5y
So for those of you (most of you) that don't follow West Texas weather, we had a brief frost come through last week (temp ranges dipped to 28*-31*F depending on location). There was a slight inversion layer (hot air a bit higher with cold air settling) and the freezing temps only last for between 1.5-2 hours. Some growers had significant damage to this year's crop and others had minimal effects. We have a pretty large area under vine with numerous varieties and ages, so we saw a smattering of different effects. Some varieties/ages/trellising are looking almost untouched and others are looking like they will only have vegetative growth this year (mostly young vines we would have knocked fruit off of anyways, thankfully).
We were also in varying stages of budbreak ("green-up"), which means we will have different variations in damage. Here are a couple pre-freeze photos below.
I'll come back and update in a week or so once we have better knowledge of what the effects are and with and some photos! Part of the game, dealing with the weather, but glad we set ourselves up to bounce back from these events.
- Specialist · Midland, TX · Member since 2018 · 198 posts · 148 votes5y
Update!
Everything survived the freezes, frost, and hail very well! Great to see proof of concept on our methods. Older experimental block of high wire is hanging the fruit we projected and the new vines are ahead of schedule and should hang a decent little crop next year! Super excited for this vintage! Rusty's crew is out there shredding wheat and weeds in the rows now :)
Tempranillo from the oldest ("experimental") block of high wire trellising
Some of the new high wire Marsanne popping out of the shelters and ready to lay some cordons!
View of the central ~20% of the vineyard from on top of the truck. It really is incredibly flat out here.
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