It's been quite some time since I updated the blog. That doesn't mean I put wine making on the back burner. This year was a year of learning, with many successes and failures. Our Sir Oliver Riesling has aged well. It was a hit among friends and family and probably our best wine yet. We also bottled our Hillside Zinfandel in 2010 and the first tasting was a bit of a failure. It tasted horrible. About 8 months later I opened a bottle and was happy it seemed to be aging well in the bottle. I still have about 20 bottles in the cellar aging that I plan to open early 2012 to learn from the aging process.

Wow, what a wet year it's been! Early on I was fighting black rot .. after that Japanese beetles, next heavy rain and winds .. after that, deer! It certainly is teaching me a lot and after all, that is what Backyard Winery was all about!

Most of the vines have reached the second trellis wire at 6 feet. I did moderate pruning on some, to focus on root growth and the main branches. I am training some to expand out on the lower trellis wire, at 3 feet.  All the vines look healthy and are growing at a nice clip. 

Since it's late August, I'll be pruning and removing grow tubes before I know it. Given I have no idea on how to prune for winter, I will be doing some research in the coming weeks. Here is a picture to give you an idea of growth.

Part of making wine comes the challenge of storing all of it. We also find it's important to try wines from around the United States and the world and building a cellar to store wine and taste is equally important when making it.

Currently, all our wine making is done at our house in Shavertown, Pennsylvania. This house is a project of ours, restoring an 80 year old home. We refer to it as Project Hillside.

July has proven to be a very productive month. Outside of combating Japenese beetles and black rot, we've got a lot of trellis work complete. The second week of July we:

1. Additional posts for grapevines

Grapevine Growth

As you see see above, we have been hit hard with Japanese beetles in July! While the vines are growing very nice, we've had fights with black rot and now Japanese beetles. I've sprayed the vines with Sevin and hoping for the best. The picture above was from July 10, 2011. I had to go out of town for 10 days so the vines have been unmanned for 10 days. I'll see how things look tomorrow when I'm back! My hope is the Sevin did it's job and the vines continue to grow.

1.5 Months after the vines were planted

The grafted vines came on April 28, 2011 and we planted on May 1, 2011.  This is a trial planting with the primary goals to learn how to prune vines and learn more about the challenges of growing vines.  We planted 10 Cabernet Sauvignon and 10 Chambourcin vines.

We built a high cordon trellis system with 6 vines on one trellis (fence side) and 4 on another (hill vines). 

The Chamboucin grapes were very aggressive and grew the fastest. I would say within 2 weeks we had solid growth inside the grow tube. The Cabernet Sauvignon was a little slow to start and I didn't see growth until 1 month in and it was rapid the next 2 weeks, nearly catching up to the growth rate of the Chambourcin.