2012 October Grape Plan 1a

This is the current status of our plan. We've tried to start with the end in mind: an October ripening wine grape for North Texas. That seems a fine goal, but a bit distant and unreal. For now, a practical goal might be merely a set of crosses (most likely cinerea x vinifera) that ripen in October, produce measurable amounts of juice and allow a reasonable body of evidence that we are on the road to a North-Texas October wine grape.

Rich had a 2nd leaf Bridlegate cinerea cross put out berries this year. The berries ripened in early-August. On August 18th, Rich wrote, "I got 6 Bridlegate X Mourvedre berries, with one seed/berry. The raisins tasted good, but not enough juice to get a Brix reading." On July 25th, I was able to taste one of the berries. It had much more juice than a cinerea, and the taste was remarkably neutral, especially when compared with the Munson varieties that were ripening at about the same time. This represents limited, but concrete evidence that we can delay vinifera ripening dates by using cinerea crosses, and still maintain a neutral taste.

Of course, our 1st cross to produce berries was far from an October ripening berry. Its ripening date fell into approximately the same time frame as many Munson crosses. Thus, we have no evidence that we can push the ripening dates to October. For the below forecast, I've assumed that 5% of the crosses will have cinerea like ripening dates. 95% will have ripening dates that more closely approach the vinifera ripening date. Still, with about 500 cinerea x vinifera crosses it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect 25 with early October ripening dates.

I've picked a 2017 milestone of 25 'October ripening crosses' as a key decision point. By the time we have 25, we should be able to assess the likelihood that at least one of these crosses has a future as a wine grape. 2017 may seem a long way off, but this is a very slow process. Consider today's request for cuttings. If the cuttings take, we may get an opportunity to create crosses in 2015. The seeds produced cannot be expected to provide berries for evaluation in 2018, a year after my 2017 decision point. Obviously, 2017 is at best a preliminary review date. The project only succeeds if we can enroll others to keep the goal alive.

The forecast was created by reviewing the short history of our efforts. The first cross was done in 2010. In 2011, we planted the first seedlings. In 2012, we had many seedlings over waist high, and one 2nd leaf seedling produces a small, sweet, neutral tasting berry.