As the days grow perceptibly shorter, the vines shift their energy from shoot production to the ripening of the fruit. The color deepens, the berries soften, flavors and aromas develop.
In a challenging viticulture season, neither unusual late season frost nor ravenous geese nor periods of near biblical deluge can keep our resilient Marquette vines from bearing at least some fruit.
The view above is from the North Vineyard, after we removed excessive leaf growth encouraged by our abundantly wet summer, in preparation for installing bird netting.
This is the season we expose clusters to the sun so they can fully and evenly ripen, and do our best to protect the sweetening fruit from bird and beast.
All it takes now is sunshine and time. One by one, the berries turn.
A simple thing, but startling and amazing nonetheless. One day the vineyard is nothing but green. The next day it is not.
No comments:
Post a Comment