Renewal

Springtime means pruning in the vineyard, when we renew the plants in preparation for the growing season. Pruning is critical because it allows us to set the stage for vine balance for the entire year. If we didn’t prune, there would be too many buds, too many shoots, and therefore too much fruit. An over-cropped vine would not be able to ripen and concentrate the flavors of the fruit. The vineyard pruning crew is trained to leave a precise number of buds on each vine. This is called the bud count. The magic number for this year is 22-24.

Pruning helps us to organize where the fruit will be located in the canopy. The two wires that we want the fruit to be situated on is called the fruiting wires. We prune to three canes (branches) with appropriately 8 buds per cane. This organization of the vine will allow uniformity of ripeness and open the canopy near the fruit zone to allow for dappled light and wind, naturally reducing mold and mildew.

We estimate that each vine requires approximately 15 cuts by the hand pruner. So with about 4,000 plants, that is about 60,000 cuts. We use stones to sharpen the pruners, and by the end of the season they're ground wafer-thin and ready for the trash bin, a small casualty to the pruning process.

At this time of year we don’t want the weather to get too warm. Instead we prefer a cool 50-55 degrees to delay the bud break as long as possible. With the chance for a late season frost damaging tender shoots, we want the bud break to wait until the 15th to 20th of April. In comparison, in the 2007 season when we had the infamous “Easter Freeze”, we had bud break on the 20th to 25th of March.

Here are are the rows prior to pruning:

And the rows after beginning the renewal process:

New Release forthcoming

Inland Sea 2008 Chardonnay | Amigoni Vineyards

We are finishing the final processes prior to bottling of the Inland Sea 2008 Chardonnay | Amigoni Vineyards. Currently we have about 175 cases in the cold stabilization process and then it will go on to filtering and bottling. We are looking forward to this release of a rich, earthly Chardonnay from an ideal growing season. We will have some winemaker's notes and more on this wine as we get closer to release. Stay tuned!

Have a grape day!

1600 Genessee, Suite 160
Kansas City, MO 64102
888-984-WINE
inlandseawinery@gmail.com