Here is your update from the field. Although back in July you decided to crop thin in August (“green harvest”) in your vineyard we are here to say that thinning the crop this year is a bad idea. Yes, it caught us off guard as well. Welcome to farming!!
What we’ve noticed is the Riesling crop in your vineyard has already balanced itself. Thinning would be a useless and wasteful pursuit at this stage. Be happy that you did choose to wait to August as we are now in a good position. We didn’t know in July with the immature fruit bunches that we had this situation. Oh yes, and there is one more point; we are not going to leaf remove either. Please let me explain.
Normally we would leaf remove to improve the air circulation around the grape bunches lowering the humidity around the fruit. Lower humidity and good air circulation reduces the pressure of fungal disease on the vines and grapes. This is a good thing. So why are we not doing it? It’s been so humid.
The weather conditions this year have produced Riesling grapes with thinner than usual skins. If we remove the leaves and expose these thin skinned grapes to direct sunlight there is the high probability for the grapes to get sunburn and for the fruit to get scorched. This penetrating heat changes the cell structure within the grape and produces grapes and resultant wine with a canned tropical character. If we can prevent the grape bunch from scalding we can preserve our wine’s stylistic nature of fresh aromatic peaches, pears and citrus. The only way to keep the sun off of the grapes is to leave the leaves on that surround the bunches. Now we do run the risk of moulds and mildews due to the high humidity (as we discussed earlier) but we must take this chance and be vigilant with our elemental applications or we will create fruit that is uncharacteristic to our international award winning wines. Sometimes, Mother Nature makes the choices for you.
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