Bugs!

Egads! Just look at the yellow jackets on a cluster of grapes in British Columbia:

I harvested near Aurora last week, and there it was honeybees all over the fruit, extracting the precious high-sugar water.

Growing grapes isn't easy. Here is an article with some of the insect-related reasons why it's difficult.

The 2013 harvest is going well. Many good wines will be made in the PacNW, but yields are down due to rains during bloom, which lowered the number of berries that set. As a grower or winemaker, it's maddening to time your harvest, because we get periods of rain that can bring in disease and birds, and given that rain stalls or even backwardizes the ripening process, it is a tricky process. We're getting 4-5 days of rain starting Friday night, but after that we expect a full week of sunny days.

Many of the earlier-ripening Modern Varieties (hybrids of vinifera and American grapes) have been harvested already; the later-ripening Moderns will likely be taken at the end of next week's sunny period, as will a good bit of the vinifera, I suspect.

2013: A warm start to the vintage, in the Pac Northwest:

Weather Underground is a good source of historical weather info. I use it to check on Growing Degree Days (base 50F), which is a measure of the amount by which the average daily high and low temps exceed 50 degrees F. It's a rough proxy for sunshine, and thus it correlates with grape development and ripeness.

Year to date 2013, we've had 534 GDD's near our place. Compare that this time in 2012 (a warm year for grapes), which was only 381! And in 2011 (a cool, wet year), it was only 216! It's early, but it looks like it may be a warm year, great for grape ripening.

Modern varieties of winegrapes continue to make inroads

The rise of modern varieties of winegrapes* continues:

Here is a good article describing how much a panel of wine lovers in California liked wines made from Marquette grapes in many northern states (Marquette was developed to prosper in cold climates).

The list of modern variety winegrapes that make good wine is growing. Each grape performs differently in different soils and climates, but for the PacNW, such a list might include (but is by no means exclusive--there are others, too):

Whites: Cayuga (and this one may be head and shoulders above the others), Interlaken, Traminette (if it ripens quickly enough), Esprit, Briana, Jupiter, New York Muscat (the last two make Muscat-style whites)

Reds: Leon Millot, Marechal Foch, Regent, Cascade, Burdin 6055, Noiret

Notes:
1. These are crosses of Vitis vinifera (French winegrapes, which have great flavor for wine) and American grape species (which have more disease resistance and which ripen earlier). It is old-fashioned crossing--putting the pollen of one grape on the uva (egg) of another, and a few years later you find out what you've got (because it takes a few years for a grape to mature enough to bear fruit). Sometimes (including lots of additional crossings--each of which takes more years) a terrific new variety is developed.

2. Some call the modern varieties "hybrids," but that term  is perjorative to some people, as "hybrid" is a synonym for "bastard," "crossbreed" and "mongrel." Hey, we are all mongrels but the term is negative.

3. Why the push for modern varieties of winegrapes? Because they are so "green." They don't require fungal sprays (unlike vinifera, which require so much spray that Europe is considering regulating their spraying. Even if the grower uses organic sprays, it still requires a lot of tractor fuel to apply all those sprays). They ripen earlier, which is an advantage in the PacNorwest (it's more likely to beat the Fall rains and it can even sometimes avoid the predations of birds, without having to install nets).

4. I choose not to grow Marquette because it has very high acid and thus is much more work in the winery. Ditto with Baco Noir.

Final report on PacNW's 2012 vintage weather

Portland, Oregon saw 2625 Growing Degree Days this year, which is quite a bit above average. The Fall was long and mostly dry; it allowed the luxury of picking on flavors. We had a record-dry July-Sept quarter. Some unirrigated grapes at harvest were shriveled from lack of soil moisture, which can lead to high alcohol wines. But overall, a very good vintage and I expect many high-quality wines.

My higher vineyard saw fewer GDD's, probably around 2300 (because Hillsboro saw 2025, and we lie between the 'boro and Portland's West Hills weather station). But that was enough to ripen many tomatoes with great flavor, and even some peppers got ripe this year. Funny--in Houston we had ripe tomatoes by May! and in Portland we're lucky to get them in August.