Articles

Nothing is worse than watching your grapes go to the birds. Fight back!

Grape growing questions answered!

The heat of the day is not necessarily the time to harvest your ripe grapes. A night harvest allows you to bring the fruit in when it’s cool, which will lower your VA, plus other benefits.

Don’t neglect your vineyard just because the grapes have been harvested. Here’s the cleanup that needs to take place.

Explore the three most common methods of irrigating a home vineyard, some of the more common myths surrounding watering grapevines, and if you need to even irrigate in the first place.

In the first installment of our new year-long series of how a homemade wine is made from homegrown grapes, we check in with the grapes at a most critical time — harvest.

Balance in a vineyard is defined as a vine that has enough leaves to ripen a small to moderate crop load. To achieve that goal, a good vineyard manager needs to pay close attention to what’s happening among the vines this time of year.

Produced from just a mother vine, grapevine clones are intended to assure growers the grapes produced will have a predictable characteristic. But is it really that simple? Wes Hagen weighs in on why clone selection may not be as important as varietal selection.

Although the best part of visiting a winery is the wine, I have to admit I love spending time in or near the actual vineyard. A vineyard in full leaf with beautiful

Whether you want to grow grapevines for winemaking, fresh eating, or just decoration, they can be propagated at home simply by taking a few cuttings and rooting them. Even if you don’t have a green thumb, you can create a micro-vineyard of your own.

The essential tools any home viticulturist will need to stay on top of their backyard vineyard.

There are several options available to a backyard grape grower when considering which trellis configuration and which training system to use. How do we focus on what’s important in a trellis and

  We winemakers are self-reliant. We like to be in charge of our own affairs and it can seem like a defeat to be forced to ask for help — whether it

Growing grapes on a farm isn’t easy. Even with tractors, spray rigs and workers to help, sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all the issues that arise during the growing season. Just when

Back in 1995 I took my first viticulture course. I had returned from a short stint as a college instructor in Northern Minnesota, which proved a bit too cold for a third

Chardonnay is a grape varietal that has an identity crisis. She is both a rock star and a charlatan, a soft spoken ballerina and a brazen harlot, generic as a white label

Budbreak is one of the most exciting times of year for the backyard winegrower. The snow has melted and you can feel the warmth of the sun on your face. The smell

“The First Duty of wine is to be Red . . . the second is to be a Burgundy.”Harry Waugh Harry Waugh’s quote (above) could have come from Mother Nature. Even nature

Grape growing is both simple and confounding. While it is simple to keep a vine alive (most climes in the US will keep a vine alive and sprawling with little effort), it

What’s the best way to cure black rot? Jake in Eastern Kentucky     I wish I could tell you that there’s a cure for black rot, but the best we can do

A healthy backyard vineyard is a treasure. It can produce delicious wine, serve as a wonderful setting from which to appreciate the miracles of nature and offer a leafy refuge from the

David Koball, Vineyard Manager at Bonterra Vineyards in Hopland, California. David has been growing winegrapes in Mendocino County in California for 14 years, all of it in certified Organic and Demeter certified

For winemakers, grape harvest is a period of intense activity. Important decisions and preparations need to happen well in advance of crush day in order for things to go smoothly. These decisions

‘Talent Borrows, Genius Steals’ -attributed to Oscar Wilde As I set out to structure this issue’s “Backyard Vines,” I revisited previous articles to see what vineyard subjects I’d neglected. Surprisingly, I found articles

At the end of the year when I’m contemplating new topics for “Backyard Vines,” I like to go through and look at all the subjects I’ve covered previously and ask myself: “What