how do your clusters look?

Cellar Rats (ITB)
1

Still a bit early to see what potential crop is out there for us, but you guys down south must have a pretty good idea of cluster size by now. I am interested to see if the buds on shoots that came late(after the frosts last year) are as fruitful as normal buds/spurs. What say you?

2

John,

We have yet to come out of the ice age… [big_boss.gif]

3

I need another week or so. Plus I’ve been too busy to look. Hey Napa and Sonoma folks, what ya seeing?

4

well, quick synopsis-

one block each of Chard and Petit Verdot got burned a bit last week. saw worse last year, but it’s significant. it’s a very low % of the overall acreage though.

I had heard around January that many who do bud dissections were noticing lower fertility. Up here, that doesn’t seem to be the case, at least in the clone 4 Chard that’s out. Seeing a lot of two cluster shoots, the occasional three, and some one or blind shoots. I won’t quantify it yet, but will let you know when we get around to it, but I wouldn’t expect it is below 1.6 - 1.7 clusters/shoot, which is about normal.

Clusters strike me as a little smaller than expected in clone 4, with fewer wings/shoulders. Still early to say for sure, though.

5

How do my clusters look?

My clusters look great! They’re of fairly decent size, have good shape, are shaded most of the time but have had some recent sun exposure. No signs of rot whatsoever. Oh wait! Sorry, wrong forum [bye2.gif]

6

Wait till summer, bud. And stock up on Tinactin.

7

Um…
[blush2.gif]

8

I was going to name the thread “show us your clusters” but I thought for sure that would end up a trainwreck headed strait for NSFW, with pictures of a couple of kiwi’s hanging down or something original like that.

9

O-M-G. [swoon.gif] [rofl.gif] I guess I’m going to have to change my avatar sometime soon!

10

Looks really really good down here. But we had around 1.3 tons an acre the last two years. Every cane has two inflorescences. If we don’t get hammered somehow its looking good for a normal crop.

11

Kevin Harvey is reporting a very large potencial crop in the vineyards he farms/buys fruit from.
I’m still curious to here if there is any reduced cluster size/number on spurs that pushed late last year after the intended buds/shoots were burned back.

12

Small Pinot Noir Vineyard here in Carneros (Sonoma side). So far, all looks good, much better than last year. Lost a good 40% of the crop last year due to frost . . . ouch . . .

13

Went out to two different ridge-top Pinot noir vineyards across the road from each other in Green Valley today. Both vineyards are ~85% through flowering. One had a very high potential crop load, but also looked like it was going to have a fair amount of shatter, reducing total crop load and providing additional ventilation to protect from early botrytis, we’ll still probably do more thinning though. The other had a moderate crop level, but it looked like the clusters were pretty well set, without much shatter. It’s still early, and we have more rain in the 3-day forecast, but looks good so far. Overall I’d say avg. cluster size and cluster count for Pinot noir is moderately larger, but have seen a lot of variation within vineyard blocks and clones.

Brian Maloney
DeLoach Vineyards

14

We are about 20% into flowering on Syrah up here right now and we have had thunderstorms dumping rain for 5 to 10 minutes a shot. Today we saw some torrential downpours, with brief periods of hail the size of large peas. [shock.gif] These storms are predicted to last through next Tues. It can’t be good. [help.gif]

15

John: The latest NOAA prediction is the rain will end sometime Saturday…if so, hopefully that’ll still give you plenty of flowering time.

16

I sure hope. [beg.gif]

17

Lots of clusters. Smack in the middle of bloom here. (Pinot.) Dense marine layer. The cut-off low offshore is about to drift inland. Poor conditions overall, but hopefully this will turn out well and only loosen op the clusters a bit?

18

As of Friday, we were seeing some berry formation at Butterdragon Hill and fuller clusters and more advanced formation at Baconbrook. More photos are on our Facebook page.

Butterdragon Hill (2 miles north of St Helena on hillside above Hwy 29)

Baconbrook (Spring Mountain District west of St Helena)

19

Up here in the Mendo highlands things are quite a bit behind you folks to the south. I have a bunch of stuff just now coming into bloom, and a bunch that’s still not quite there. Of course we’re have nights down into the mid-40’s and daytime temps hitting the mid 70’s. Not the most perfect bloom weather, but I’d rather have 74 than 104, which is possible here at this time of year. It sure ain’t gonna be an early harvest in our neck of the woods. I’ll throw up a couple of pics soon. [shock.gif]

20

Beautiful shots Randy.


I’ll post ours when I get up there in a few weeks.