Good afternoon ya'll,
Well, Independence Day has come and gone. Things here on the farm continue to motor on. Wojtek and the guys continue to leaf pull. Once again we pull leaves in the vineyard to maximize the amount of sun that we can get on the clusters. A vine will produce many leaves in a season of growing. However, some of these leaves will make access to sunlight for the fruit more difficult. So, this is where we come into play.
Removing leaves is critical in cool climate viticulture (fancy way of saying grape farming). In hot region viticulture farmers may want to encourage shading as this will slow down ripening. It is ideal to have slow even ripening versus fast and furious ripening because the former encourages maximum flavor development. I have said this before, but flavor development and sugar development happen separately.
Flavor development in grapes requires a slow progression, sugar development on the other happen can happen quickly. In many hot regions sugar development out paces flavor development. Vineyards are forced to pick because if they do not, then sugar will be very high and the resulting alcohol will sky rocket. Long Island which is a cool climate can develop lots of great flavors, but we have to do things like leaf pull to help us attain maximum sugar development.
Cheers,
Juan.
