Change

For months in the vineyard now we've been surrounded by walls of solid green.

Tiny buds that seemed so vulnerable on those startlingly cold May mornings have since unleashed a torrent of growth.

We've trained, nurtured, and positioned those individual shoots.

Up through the trellis wires.

Forcing rampant nature into an orderly form it would rather not take. We've had a lot of intimate contact with acres of nothing but green.

So needless to say, something that is NOT green catches your eye.

Marquette cluster in the North Vineyard, July 21

As it did a few days ago.

The first few berries I assumed were wasp-stung or perhaps bruised by the tractor.

Then I'd see another.

And another.

From sour apple green to a slightly bruised olive, until finally pink, and ultimately purple.

So it wasn't an injury or an outbreak of disease in the vineyard, but rather the season unfolding exactly as it should:

The second-to-last week of July, amidst a rare stretch of startlingly pleasant 75-degree days, we have arrived at the season of Veraison.

Veraison is when the grape vines shift their energy from vegetative growth, to the ripening of the fruit.

The outward clue to this internal shift is the sudden arrival of points of color amid all of the green.

One by one, the berries (as each individual grape on the bunch is known) turn.

For a few days, which some call the party balloon phase, the individual berries on each cluster will vary: Greens and pinks and reds and purples happily co-mingle on all the same bunch.

Eventually, they will stabilize to the final varietal hue.

In the case of our our vineyard, our six varietals will produce clusters that will range from amber (Vignoles) to apricot (Aromella) to to bronze (Frontenac Gris) to dark purple (Arandell and Petite Pearl) to blue-black (Marquette).

Until these jewel tones settle into their final ripe color, we will enjoy the variety, and a palette that changes by the hour, with each subtle shift of the afternoon rays, with each berry that darkens and sweetens, exactly on cue.

Blackberries along the South Vineyard fence row.

This year, veraison struck the same day the wild brambles along the back fence row yielded their first glistening fruit, the same day the apples in the orchard acquired their first blush of red, the same day the poke weed along the gravel lane began to drip fountains of purple fruit.

The shortening of the days.

The approach of autumn.

All around us, the plants are responding, coloring the landscape, enticing the birds.

It's a beautiful scene, but one in which we can't linger.

Leaves must be pulled from the ripening clusters, exposing them to even light to ripen the fruit.

Vines must be trained.

Bird netting unfurled, hopefully in advance of ravenous migratory hordes.

It's the kind of day you pause at the end of, look down the neat green row you've just worked through, admiring the new hues, ignoring the rampant untamed growth (just for the moment) that lies ahead.

Our varietals in August (clockwise from top): Marquette, Frontenac Gris, Arandell, Petite Pearl, Aromella. Center: Vignoles.