Planting

Week of June 13th

We ordered our new Marquette grapes vine from Quebec and another local grape grower brought them nearby to Kingston. We picked them up from there, using one of our local cable ferries (Oh, at these were the last load of grapes, we had already taken a fully laden load).

They came 48 to a box. There were 37 boxes. We have some wok to do...

You can see the size of the vines here. They seem fairly healthy with some good growth (Some actually had some grapes already forming!).

Our process was marking off the line with some flags. Then I go through with the ripper on the tractor twice, loosening up the soil and digging a hole deep enough to plant with little to no shovelling). The plants are spaced 4 feet apart, meaning we are going to have some long rows. A good sign are the many worms we found as we worked, hopefully meaning the soil is fairly nutrient rich.

We then use the previous row, measure 9 feet across, set the flags and I am off again (It was quite bumpy with all the rocks in the lower quarter of the field).

1776 plants. Three and a half days. Bloody tired. The reason I am not writing much :)

Oh, and my new pimpin' shades, a Walmart purchase. This is the third pair of glasses this summer, the previous two having been broken when I hit my head in the tractor going over some large bump. The glasses I wear have gotten progressively cheaper as the summer has gone one. As for the hand gesture...I don't even know...

Cheers,

Alan

Pruning and Training

Week of June 6th

We spent part of this week pruning some of our vines. I thought I would walk through the process which I only learnt myself this week (Oh and by the end of the first day I also learnt that I need sun screen...pretty badly, my farmer tan speaks to that :)

I should also advise everyone that being a novice winery manager, I definitely do not always use the correct terminology!

This is one of our new white hybrid vines. It does not have an official name yet, just known as ES-18101239813498...or some number I can never remember. This vine has been fairly well trained as it growing straight and has loads of suckers (Which need to be removed so the vine concentrates its growing where we want it).  

We tie the vine with biodegradable twine to the metal stakes but first we need to detach the branches.You can see here how the vine attaches itself to practically anything. They are fairly tough, pulling won't achieve too much, far easier to cut them.

Here is one of the limbs I cut off to encourage growth. You can already see the grape clusters forming which is a very good sign for the hardiness of these vines.

After cutting the limbs off we can train the vines to go horizontally (Again, by tying them with twine). It is going in one direction here and will two limbs eventually, one going in each direction. Then the leaves will sprout up to the upper wires to collect as much sun as possible and the grape clusters will form around waist height.

And that is done. We will check back periodically over the summer and hopefully will have a small crop of grapes from these new vines.

Cheers,

Alan

P.S. That weekend I partook in a fine Canadian tradition I had forgotten about, S'mores! Made around a campfire. Yum! 

P.P.S. Yes, I know I need a shave.

Springfield, NB

Week of May 30th

While Leeko was enjoying a much deserved break in Toronto, Leonard and I were busy finishing ripping vines out and sorting out some much needed drainage issues. Okay, to be fair, Travis and his fantastic excavator did most of this work, but Leonard and supervised, an always underrated skill...

But first I thought you might like to see how I could be spending my days, on the left, and how I often do spend my days, on the right. Though before you start feeling sorry for me :) there is an upside. When some of you were young and found it chilly in your house you likely asked your father if you could turn up the heat. He, again likely, in turn said to go stand outside for five minutes, come back in and you'd feel very warmed up. However slightly sadistic that logic is, it works in my case, because after a day of bouncing over furrows at 20 kph, my mustang on the road at 80 kph seems like heaven!

No, this isn't the underside of an outhouse. It is in fact a natural stream. The excavator had dug done maybe half a foot and found this. You probably cannot tell from a picture, but it was bubbling a few centimetres straight up and had been doing so for as long as we have had this land. It explains why this corner of our field was always so saturated and very little would grow.

It is much clearer here just how much water is on the ground...OR SPRINGS IN THE FIELD...wait a minute, field...spring...spring of field...nah, must have been thinking of something else.

To try and help resolve this problem we had some trenches dug to the ditch that runs along the edge of the property and filled them with 4 inch stone, creating a French drain. I will say it is successful as the upper drain was already filled with water by the end of the day!

We did sacrifice some of our field to the drains, but as they funnelled the excess water off the rest of it, it is a small price to pay to maximize our growing capacity (Oh, and before anyone suggests, yes the fields are drain tiled, it simply couldn't keep up with the amount of water we had). 

On a more fun note, Travis let Leonard and I dig and drive the excavator at the end of the week. OOOHHH NELLIE! Do I know what I want for Xmas! It was like a video game. With a big dangerous bucket. Which tears a hole in anything. Including dirt, rocks and zombie nazis (Ok, not exactly like a video game :)

Leonard too admitted it was the one piece of farm equipment we were missing. If only it have a pto for a snowblower attachment, I'd consider it!

Cheers,

Alan

Ripping!

Week of May 23rd

We are getting nearer to having our fields ready for our new vines. This week was spent ripping the old plants out of the ground following the previous week where we took out the posts, wires, etc...

But first a shot I took from the top of the Pring field looking down towards Belleisle Bay. Suffering a chilly winter does have some rewards with vistas like this :) 

Here you can see the ripper attached to the PTO. The blades are adjustable to however we like, so if we choose to rip alongside the planted vines to refresh the soil we can. Or, as we plan to for our new vines, we can leave a single blade on to rip a row.

Here you can see one of the old vines I've just ripped out. 

And here it is much closer up. What is interesting here is even in slightly rocky soil, the vines can still grow to a healthy size. The problem with these vines is they were planted too deep. The thick root here was underground when it should have been planted a bit higher so the root rose out of the ground. All our new vines will be planted better (Fingers crossed!).

A row finished which took quite a bit of tooing and froing with the ripper. To be fair it is not perfect for this task at hand. But fortunately we have an excavator coming next week which will just pull the whole vine out in one go, much easier.

Still, it was a good learning experience to use the ripper, even if we are going to only use an excavator in the future. I did work up a good sweat, even sitting in the tractor as I had to keep twisting around to see what I had just done. 

Cheers,

Alan

(P.S. My gosh do I need a shave and a cut!)

2011 All Canadian Wine Championships

Week of May 16th

A very small post this week to celebrate, for us, a very huge award! The Gillis of Belleisle Winery has won its first ever award, a silver in the red hybrid category at the All Canadian Wine Championships. 

http://canadianwinetrail.com/cwt/acwc-winners-2011/

All credit has to go to Leeko for producing this wine in his first year as winemaker, just imagine what is to come! We believe that this is the first grape wine to win in the province. Belliveau Orchards has often won for their excellent fruit wines.

A blend of Baco Noir and amarone-style Frontenac. Amarone means the grapes are left in bunches and placed in a climate controlled room for a few months. The resultant berry has a significant increase in natural sugar and through fermentation, alcohol. 

We have about 120 cases on hand for this year but we are planning on increasing upon this for next year.

Craig Pinhey, New Brunswick's literary sommelier wrote a very nice write up about us and for the record, I AM SMILING!!!

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/article/1409987

Cheers,

Alan

To the Fields!

Week of May 9^th

This week was spent clearing part of a field of the old vines, posts and wire in preparation for our new vines. It mostly involved repetitious processes which I must applaud Leonard for being quicker than I (Especially when it came to coiling wire).

Part of the reason we are pulling out these vines is because they were planted much too deep.

We first need to cut the vines from the wires, then cut the pegs holding the wire to each post, then cut the branches off, then cut the tightening handles on each end, then roll all the wires up in case we use them again

and finally pull out the posts.

Anyone have any need for rolled wire and posts? Perhaps you fancy a fence?

I found multiple posts with what appear to be worm tracks embedded into them. I found their lack of unity somewhat pleasing.

Needless to say we were happy to see the end of the day.

Not a wordy blog this week I'll grant you but with so many pictures to try and place I felt it would simply get too long.

Cheers,

Alan

(P.S. – Mother Nature seems to have determined that if I am to send my days in the field that I am to have bangs! Not by choice but by wind :)

Bottling...and more bottling...

Week of May 2^nd

To be fair, I shouldn't complain too much, all told we spread 24 hours of bottling over the course of 5 days, with other vineyard work mixed in. It is only the repetitive nature of it which can drain your spirits.

In effect, we were three people doing the work of four to five people, depending on how many stages we wanted to finish. I happily took on the work of two people, the internal cleaning and filling of the bottles, Leeko worked the corker and Leonard, our lead farm hand, the exterior cleaning. In the future we hope to make use of an automatic bottling line, but for the time being, phew, hard work :)

We decided to leave the capping of the bottles for when we labeled them. Each morning I moved as fast as I could to try and back the other fellows up…but I couldn’t catch Leeko :(

Also one can never rush Leonard, who prefers a job done right to one done quickly. That said, by the afternoon I started to slow down considerably.

Still by the end of the week all our varieties of red were tucked away on bottles, so a measurable accomplishment for the week at least (Oh, and this is one of FOUR pallets we finished with!).

Next week, we march to the fields!

Cheers,

Alan

Welcome New Tanks!

I considered writing an outline of who I am, my fellow staff and the winery to start this blog but upon some limited consideration (As I sit with my girlfriend Sara on this cloudy Sunday watching BBC's Pride & Prejudice) I have changed my mind. I think it would be more natural to have persons and places wander by themselves into my posts. So, shall we?

Week of April 25^th

I was on a brief holiday in Cape Breton with Sara received an email from Leeko, the estate winemaker and vineyard manager, saying that our new stainless tanks had arrived. The three tanks, each with a volume of 3000l, increased our tank capacity to 18000l.

We organized a group of family and friends to come by to help tip the tanks to a upright positions, which was achieved with some basic physics (We attached a chain to one joint on their tops, causing a bit a swinging once raised by the tractor), and some minor stubbing of my fingers (Thank you Dad…).

Our first orders of business were to high pressure wash and clean them thoroughly. We then transferred our new Belleisle Red from our 1000l tanks and combined it into one of our new tanks in preparation for bottling the following week. A week which would be quite tiring indeed, which I am clearly not anticipating in this picture.

Since this blog is meant to outline the processes we are going through at the winery and nothing else, I will leave this post here, only to add my thanks to Leeko for these and I am sure many future pictures.

Cheers,

Alan