Growing Wine Grapes

I grew grapes for wine, the noble Vitis Vinifera, for close to 30 years. A good wine can enhance a meal. In fact, given any other choice I will choose water with lemon if a decent wine is not available. The acid in the wine, or from the lemon, keeps the palate clear and lets you get more flavor out of a well-done meal. Then there is the allure, “why yes I grow my own grapes and make my own wine my dear, care for a glass?” 

I know it sounds trite but good wine starts in the dirt and everything in the dirt ends up in the wine. I had sandy, rocky soil with minimal amounts of organic material. Vines need to struggle to make good wine grapes. I did fertilize but with composted organic material and a mixture of manures. If your manure still contains some amount of ammonia in it the wine will have an interesting bouquet so have patience give it 2-3 years to compost well. Watering, I always drip irrigated but sparingly. If you’ve got city water its’ treatment chemicals will end up in the wine so avoid it as much as possible. I had my own deep-water wells, so I didn’t have that worry. It’s the same with pest treatments. I planted a certain type of tree near the vineyard that Ladybugs were partial to. Ladybugs do a number on most common insect pests.

So, you’ve got your dirt now what? Dig son dig. My preferred vine and row spacing was 8 feet by 8 feet, 8 feet between vines with rows 8 feet apart. I dug a trench approximately 3 feet wide by 3 feet deep for each row of vines. Before you ask, yes, I did it by hand. Machinery can actually make things worse as it can compact the soil to rock hard consistency where it isn’t digging. The idea here is to get the vines’ roots to run deep and spread. If your soil is especially compacted a power auger is useful to break up the soil.

Next up you need a trellis because grapes require a lot of support. I used a four-wire trellis with two arms to spread the canopy out. The more leaf area you have the more photosynthesis and consequently higher growth you will have. It also will drive the acid sugar balance in the grapes. You’ll have to experiment with it to find out what works best for your location and microclimate. Fortunately, you have that 4 to 5 years before you get a good crop. I’ve done some drawings showing various things. I know the drawings aren't great, but those are the breaks.

The first year the only thing you’re trying to do is grow the vine to the trellis. As the buds off the vine stock start to expand and grow pinch off all but one of the growths and let it grow up to the top wire on your trellis.

In the second year you will do a similar thing and let one bud expand along each trellis wire. A bud will make a cane, so at the end of year two you will be rewarded with a vine that now looks like it’s ready to produce.

In year three you will let buds along the arms produce canes that in your producing years will provide the structure for your grape clusters. In this year let a few clusters grow on each vine for testing purposes and to get a feel for your season. At the end of each year prune the canes back so things stay tidy and well managed in your vineyard. Don’t screw around, burn the pruned canes as they are usually the single worst source of potential diseases in your vineyard.

It’s year four and you are now ready to grow some grapes. Or conversely you have said phooey and decided to purchase wine instead. No matter. I let my vines produce from a total of about 40 buds, remember each bud produces a cane and one or more grape clusters per cane so prune accordingly. As the season progresses you will see tiny little grape clusters form. Pinch some of them off so you have about 15 to 20 clusters per vine. This vastly improves their quality and that’s what you’re after not quantity. My goal was to get about one gallon of wine per vine and those numbers were pretty solid for me.

You’ve got the grapes growing and you’re watching with bated breath throughout the summer months. As the sun shines and the bees buzz your grapes are lustily producing sugars as the acid in them drops. When do you pick? This is one of those things where boredom is closely followed by a frenzy of work. Towards the end of the season, I started testing my grapes. The key here was just the right amount of sugar with the right amount of acid.

There are three numbers to watch and test for: Degrees Brix or sugar, Titratable Acidty (TA), and pH. I’d take a few grapes from each vine and crush them in a blender and strain them to get a testable juice. First off was Brix. This can be done with a refractometer or a hydrometer. The refractometer measures the amount of sugar by refraction across a scale with gradation, where the hydrometer measures the density of the fluid. Next up is the TA, they sell kits for this and it’s pretty easy to do. Finally, you check the pH of the juice. I always used a notebook and recorded my findings. I tested my grapes at least every other day, the numbers can change fast, within 24 hours sometimes.

Oh yeah, what are the numbers? Brix should be between 23 and 26 degrees with TA around 7.5 g/L (0.75%) and a pH of 3.3 for robust red wines. This is what I always grew, big reds. If you’re right around these numbers pick like mad! So, there we go. The rest happens indoors and is a whole other field of endeavor. I did have a label for my wine, the logo was "Dark Horse." 

On a final note, growing the grapes and making the wine let me touch The Profound just for a moment. I was always astounded that I was living in a World containing a rather scruffy looking plant whose fruit could be rendered by a miniscule fungus into something that could be so satisfying.