light frost 11-1-14

As I write, Opossom Hollow is reporting 30.4 F, and the temperature can drop for the next 30 minutes.  Ice was clearly visible on the Ranger cab.  I covered the citrus at 6 AM when the reported temp was 34.  As usual, the forecast low was almost 10 degrees higher. (39).

Chalk Mountain cinerea blooms in the vineyard

'Chalk Mountain cinerea seedling 'w'.  The photo was taken 5/28/14.  The flowers were pollinated with 'Regent'.  We have had two Chalk Mountain cinerea females bloom for the first time.

Breeding for 2014 should be over in a day or two.

Frost event 4-15-14

We had a fairly hard frost this morning. The low at nearby Opossum Hollow was 25.5.  My measurements on frost events in the vineyard generally come in a bit lower, but I didn't have any instruments out this morning.

Here is what the temps looked like (click to expand):

Sunday night, I counted 14 crosses with developing flowers.  This evening, there were only 3.  Two of the survivors were cinerea crosses. The third looks like is has a cinerea pedigree, but the parents are unknown.

Below is a good example the cinerea style 'frost response'.  It parents were Bridlegate Cinerea and Mourvedre.  Note the surviving inflorescence and swelling bud.  Neither show much damage.  Further up the cane, a number of growth points were completely toasted, but the vine had not entirely budded out and ought to produce a crop.   I didn't notice any swelling bud damage.

Cinerea crosses are the only vines with buds still in the 'swelling' phase.

Bridlegate Cinerea x Mourvedre (click to expand):

The photo demonstrates 2 frost adaptations cinerea seems to exhibit: 1) resilience to sub-freezing surface temperatures, and 2) variation in bud burst timing, producing a sequence of bud-burst dates, insuring late frosts cannot wipe out the vine's ability to produce fruit.

The local cinerea had the least damage.  Paluxy cinerea did better than Chalk Mountain cinerea,  The original Paluxy cinerea was found on the river bank, just half a mile up stream.  The original Chalk Mountain cinerea was found about 20 miles away, on a relatively high mesa.  Both did better than the Red River cinerea that was found near Dennison, about 4 hours north of here.

More typical is the below photo of 'selfed Rougeon'.  This is what happened to the crosses with no local cinerea in their pedigree.  Almost all the leaves have been destoyed.  This vine was loaded with large inflorescence nearing floraison.  Now, there is little left.  Note the uniformity of development.  Bud-burst was very uniform for this cross.  It is very unlikely to produce any fruit this year.

 Selfed Rougeon (click to expand):

Last year, we had a similar experience with selfed Rougeon seedlings.  The vine was loaded with flowers when the May frost event occurred.  That relatively light frost destroyed every blossom, and none emerged later in the year.

Last year, rupestris and bicolor crosses survived the May frost and produced fruit.  Neither survived today's frost. Both had every inflorescence destroyed.

Mediterranean pollen sources for the October grape

Some rooted cuttings with Mediterranean heritage are telling me that spring has arrived in the greenhouse.  They were potted last fall, and put out a few leaves before Thanksgiving.  Cold March nights in the teens took the greenhouse into the lower 30s.  These vines looked a bit stressed the following week.  Now, they are putting on a little grown spurt. All of this is well ahead of anything outside in the vineyard.

Their late ripening dates caught my attention when reviewing the US National Plant Germplasm System's database in 2012. Coming from hot, low latitude climates, they should produce some interesting crosses with native Texan vines. All three produce large, low acid table grapes.  When crossed with tart, small berry local rupestris and cinerea, the result should be interesting.

Itonychi Mavro (Greek): Based on genetic evidence this is either a child or parent of Black Morocco, which has been a popular table grape in the Mediterranean for centuries. It was collected by Dr. Harold Olmo and became part of the Davis repository in late 1948. The specimen may have come from the island of Cyprus, but was simply labeled 'From Greece'.  I couldn't find the name 'Itonychi Mavro' used anywhere else on the Internet.  The name was 'romanized' by Dr. Olmo, which may account for this.  Mavro is Greek for 'black' but looks like this in the Greek alphabet: μαύρος. 

Itonychi Lefko (Greek): According to genetic work, it is identical to ''Olivette Blanche' (France).   According to Winkler's 'General Viticulture', Olivette Blanche is an attractive table grape. The clusters are very large and elongated, with a narrowing at the end.  Grapes of this shape are known as 'ladyfinger' grapes.  The skin is white to yellow, with little acidity.  The skin is thin and prone to bruise, though. It does well in the hot San Joaquin valley of California.   Due to thin skins and associated shipping issues, Winkler concludes it is 'relatively unknown.'  The DNA works says 'Itonychi Lefko'/Olivette Blanche' is the same as Pirovano (Italy), 'Rish Baba' (Persia), Husseine (Afghanistan), Niunai (China),  and Siar (Afghanistan). Apparently, the shipping difficulty for fruit has not constrained people from shipping rooting material from one end of the Silk Road to the other.

Here is a photo of 'Rish Baba' grapes, courtesy of Paradise Nursery:

DVIT 2044: An Algerian table grape collected in 1925 by Dr. Olmo.  There isn't a great deal of information on the selection.  It was one of only late ripening repository selections from Algeria.  Of the cuttings, it was the first to put out leaves. Unlike the above two, this vine has not responded to the lengthening days.  Hopefully, it will show some vigor soon.

2013 Ripening Dates and Harvest Brix (est.)

Alphonse de Serres x op (7/20/13, 20 Brix)
Extra (7/30/13, 15 Brix)
Black Spanish (8/4/13, 22 brix)
Bridlegate x Carnelian  (9/6/13, 22 brix)
Bicolor x Lady Patricia (9/10/13, 24 brix)
Bridlegate x OP  (9/15/13?, ?)
(B49  cinerea X Villard Noir) x herbemont (10/10/13, 15 brix)

A couple of notes on the chart.  First, the local commercial harvest at Red Caboose ran from 7/22/13 to about 8/15/13.  I've estimated the harvest date based on my field notes.

I mistakenly harvested the one Bridlegate x OP cluster on 8/11/13.  We were about to leave on a vacation, and I was afraid it would ripen while we were gone.  Once I picked it, and looked at the underside of the cluster, I discovered the berries hadn't finished turning blue.  The bottom halves of the berries were still green.

I was surprised by the steady drop off in brix during October.  I was expecting higher and higher sugar as the berries started to raisin.  That didn't happen.  It seemed they lost both taste and sugar during October.  On the other hand, the Alphonse de Serres raisined during summer and produce a 26 brix on 9/2 (which I omitted since the cluster was clearly raisining and ants had attacked the cluster).

Both Black Spanish and Extra vines produced small crops compared to 2012.  This seemed to follow from the late frost in the first week of May.  The frost caused Extra to put out a couple of new clusters in June, which were just about ripe when our November freeze ended the season.  Getting the late start extends the days required to ripen since September and October have so many fewer 'Growing Degree Days'.

I let the clusters on the three late ripening vines to hang as long as possible.  The Bridlegage - Carnelian was clearly raisoning by 10/1/13, so I picked the 3 clusters.  Great raison tastes!  The other two hung until our November freeze.

Texas Ice Wine, Anyone?

The photo taken on Thursday morning, 11-14-13. Reported low that morning was 25.2 °F. The prior day low was 21.7 °F.

The vine is Cliff Amber's 'Cabin Bicolor' x Lady Patricia. Grapes were past their prime. Brix was below 20, and acid was gone. They were still juicy, though.

Algerian grape in Texas

The first of my 7 'hot climate' cuttings has put out some buds.  I waited until late September to try rooting the cuttings.  They arrived in late April, which would have forced them to root during May when it starts getting hot.  So, they stayed in the refrigerator for the summer.  Hopefully, this and the others will enjoy the greenhouse this winter.

The vine seems to have arrived in the US as a seed in 1925.  It's ancestors were probably in France during the 1800s, but they must have thrived in the Algerian heat.     

DVIT 2044

1st Octorber brix tests

Cabin Bicolor x Lady Patricia, brix of 23, taste reminded me of sucking on a sugar cube.  The biggest berry is about .44 inches in diameter

Other notes and brix readings:

Chalk Mountain cinerea x Villard Blanc

Saturday, I went up to Chalk Mountain and picked my crosses.  It was the first time I had been up since May 27 when I pollinated.

I had 6 clusters bagged.  In each bag, I had used a twisty to attach a flower to the cinerea blossom.  I didn't try using a brush to pollinate.  It was a bit early, and flowers were not open, yet.

In 4 cases, the twisty didn't hold and the flower fell off.  Zero berries produced.  In two bags, the twisty stuck.  In one, 0 berries.

That left one bag.  Chalk Mountain cinerea x Villard Blanc.  This had 8 dark berries and a number green ones of various sizes.    Each of the 8 dark berries had 1 seed.  I checked the 3 largest green berries and foudn each had a full sized light green seed.

I didn't see any clusters in the trees.  This surprised me.  I know where to look, but didn't find any.

The vine was very stressed out.  There were no leaves on the cane I had used for bagging clusters..

I suspect the berries were not as ripe as they would be in a few weeks.  The brix was only 18.6.  Last year, on 9/2/12, I got a brix of 21.5.

I will be planting the seeds in a few days.  I'm also going to try rooting some North African vinifera that has been in the refrigerator all summer.  It came from GRIN too late to root.  Summer temps were almost upon us.

First September taste tests

We have survived August!  I'm expecting the heat to stay in the upper 90s for a week or so, then start cooling off.

Based on reports from other vineyards, there has been a late harvest here in North Central Texas.  Red Caboose, 30 miles south was picking in mid-August.  Brushy Creek, 50 miles north, was harvesting August 31st.  My Black Spanish (Lenoir), the only commercially bottled grape that will fruit here in the frosty hollow, was ripe August 5th.  For us, that's about average.

We still have 3 vines with clusters still hanging. All three vines were grown from seeds.  "Bridlegate x Carnelian" was bred by Rich Ellison.  "(B49 cinerea x Villar Noir) x Herbemont" and "Cabin Bicolor x Lady Patricia" was bred by Cliff Ambers.   They all started growing here in 2010, so it is their 4th leaf.

Below are the first brix tests on them.  Since this is the first year for these crosses to produce fruit, it isn't clear when any will be ripe.  The Bridlegate cinera x Carnelian tastes like it is ready.  The (Cinerea x Villard Noir) x Herbemont is clearly several weeks from being ready.  The Bicolor x Lady Patricia is a real surprise.  The bicolor side is from Ohio.  Lady Patricia is a cross of two French-American vines.  It isn't clear why the fruit is hanging so long, but the vine really likes it here in Texas!

We haven't used any sprays at all this year, so the local white fly and leaf-roller populations have been active.  Leaf rollers seem to have a particular fondness for many of the cinerea crosses.  All three vines had their clusters protected in brown paper bags, or nylon socks.  Birds strip everything from unprotected clusters.  They even poked a few holes in the nylon socks.

Black Spanish berries are about .4 inches in diameter here.  All three berries are around the same size. 

Bridlegate x Carnelian:

(Barrett's B27 x Villard Noir) x Herbemont

Cabin Bicolor x Lady Patricia

Northern Grapes Project

I came across this when I typed 'North Texas October Grape Project' into my browser's URL field.  It looks like something I need to review carefully. 

Northern Grapes Project

 "Our vision is to develop grape production, winemaking, and marketing practices suited to the unique characteristics of these V. riparia-based cultivars marketed through retail tasting rooms and their niche in the U.S. wine market..."

Reviewing response to the record breaking late frosts

Frost tolerance this spring was surprising. Some vines ignored frost, others were lost all their flowers and/or fruit to frost. Here is a recap (click to enlarge). The data is in roughly chronological order. The blue lines represent  frosty mornings.

To summarize, it looks like the local wild varieties have adaptations that maintain fruit production despite a late frost, even a record breaking late frost like those we suffered through in 2013.  I've been told April 15 is the last possible frost date, and we had 2 after April 15.  The French-American crosses have no coping adaptations, and none produced any fruit.  The North American bred vines, Extra and Lenoir were in between.

Grape purity

Like anything else 'grape', purity and hybrid are in the eye of the beholder.  As far as I can tell from the academic papers I've seen, vitis has a lot of regional gene pools that exchange DNA continuously with neighboring regions.  From this perspective, 'Hybrids of other species' doesn't mean much unless you are saying people want to cross non-reproductive organisms such as a grape x peach cross.

DNA flow between somewhat stable regional gene pools seems a better model than 'species'.  Pure and 'hybrid' don't seem workable metrics.

This brings me to the notion of 'regional wine,' something that reflects the regional vitis gene pool. For my own purposes, 'regional wine' is something associated with a region's non-commercial winemakers, the salt-of-the-earth wine makers (anyone who doesn't make wine for a board of directors on a different coast). The real road block to a regional wine is not grapes, but our choices about what to focus upon.  As such, the project of determining 'the taste' of 'Central Texas wine' by breeding a 90% Central Texas cinerea with perfect flowers, 25+ brix and an October harvest may seem an implausible long term plan, but an unstoppable one, too.

Bridlegate x op cluster discovered

The last two months have been devoted to getting the irrigation system up, and keeping seedlings, cuttings and transplants alive.  We are making progress, but nothing is done. I'm keeping things alive, though.

It is so hot during the day, I end up having two work sessions.  One in the morning, and one after dark, wearing a headlamp. So, at midnight, I am rushing to finish line testing and replacing drippers that are not working.

Something caught my eye. It looked a bit like a caterpillar, which I'm always watching for.  On closer inspection, it was a cluster I'd never seen before!  It is the first Bridlegate x OP to produce a cluster.

First impressions don't mean much, but the berries are very small.  It might be a cultivated wild cinerea female.  Bridlegate is a cultivated wild cinerea, and the pollen parent was probably a wild male cinerea.  If so, it will be the 4th cultivated wild cinerea in my vineyard, and the first to set a cluster.  I'm looking forward to making some wild cinerea wine and trying to find out what it wants to be.

Frosty Hollow

Here is what I saw as the sun started coming up: 28.9 degrees Fahrenheit.  That temperature reading was coming from a sensor  outside, exposed to the open sky.

It was colder Friday morning.  Here is a photo of my car's roof at 6:12 AM Friday.

Here is what it looked like on Saturday morning at 7:08 AM.  Not as much frost, but the air was drier and the temperature reading about 1 degree lower.

A friend here in Glen Rose lives up on the mesa, about 220 feet higher (860 vs. 640 feet above sea level).  The top of the ridge is 1200 feet, so he is on the relatively flat escarpment below the limestone outcrops that punctuate the gently rising landscape as one travels west.  As a crow flies, he is only 6 miles away.  Still, he saw no frost this week.  Further, all his vines are carrying fruit, now.  In short, his vines are 2 or 3 weeks ahead of mine, and every vine has fruit.

That is the difference between 'frosty hollow' and the normal world.  I wouldn't trade, though.  I get significant late frost 3 years out of 4.  My friend gets one once in 4 years.  That isn't enough to breed for late frosts.  If you want to breed a reliable Texas producer, Frosty Hollow is the place to be.

Here is a comparison of grape flowers in the west vineyard. All three pictures were taken this evening.

This is a wild mustang.  It was here before we started the vineyard.  It blossomed, today.  Note the pistol and stamen on the open blossom. This is a female grape flower.  The stamen will not produce pollen. 

This is Bridlegate cinerea x Carnelian. This is a week or so from blossoming.

This is Plainview cinerea.  It is a wild vine.  We planted a cutting of it last year.  The blossom will probably open in 3 weeks.

 The mustang and cinerea are wild vines, and have used different strategies for handling the late frosts we have here in Central Texas.   Mustangs start early and often suffer from a late frost.  It doesn't seem to bother them though. The vine is covered with blossoms.  The cinerea seems to simply start late.  This may be the latest vine to blossom in the vineyard.  Late is fine for cinerea, its berreis won't ripen until late October or November.

In the middle is a vine whose 'mother' was the Bridlegate cinerea. The pollen parent was the vinifera Carnelian.  It is somewhere in between.  Vinifera is generally early, earlier than mustang.  It doesn't have any of the 'smarts' the mustang displays, though.  They get wiped out by late frosts.  It looks like this cross is taking the cinerea route and blossoming late.  It is no where as late as the Plainview cinerea, though.

We have had both late and super-late frosts this year.  It isn't clear to me that cinerea and cinerea crosses are going to put out a lot of blossoms, so their delay strategy may not be as robust as I'd like.  I think we could use a bit of both mustang's 'smarts' and cinerea's 'delay' factor in the 'October Grape'.  Based on what is going to flower here this year, rupestris and doaniana both share the mustang 'smarts' factor.  Unfortunately, they ripen very early.  Maybe there is something we can do to get the early bird smarts into cinerea and still avoid bringing the early ripening date along with it.

2012 Cinerea wine

John Barnett and I tasted his 2012 Plainview Cinerea, Friday.  It was a 'one bottle batch'.  John thought it went bad early in fermentation, but added some sugar and things seemed to turn around.

It definitely was not vinegar.  It was a sweet red with a very dark red color. Alcohol content was high.

Acid was probably low.  My comment was 'fruity, but the fruit is all bundled up'.  John thought the grapes had raisined (he picked the berries in November).

My other comment was, 'it is a bit like fruit juice, not wine.  It doesn't have much bite.'  This might be a lack of tannins.

There were no odd overtones.  No grass, no herbs, no labrusca.

We sat around and had a nice conversation on John's porch, watching the sun set.  Contributing to conversation is high on my list of wine qualities, so I was very impressed.

Seedling count (3/29/13)

North Texas October Grape seedlings:

Other seedlings:

Crosses with low germination rates:

Late March 2013 freeze

We have a forecast of 28 Monday morning.  As I write, it is about 11 PM, and the temperature is already in the 30s.  We expect a frost Tuesday morning.  There is a chance of frost next we, April 2.  That is still a bit far away.

Before I started breeding grapes, these late frosts bothered me a great deal.  I would worry about how to protect the grapes.  As a breeder, a different problem presents itself.  How to use the response to these frosts to improve my breeds?

For example, I could simply remove every vine that suffers from the freeze.  At this point, about 15% of the vineyard has sprouted leaves.  Five or six have quite a few.  All these leaves will be turned into what reminds me of toast.  The leaf will crumble up into dust if you rub them between your fingers.  All the leafy xylem vessels pop due to the expansion of freezing water and the leaf dries out within a day or two.

It isn't clear what will happen to the vines in their various states of spring growth.  With the leafy vines, the canes may die, forcing the roots to put up new shoots from the ground.  Generally, the fuzzy buds (no growth, just a little fuzz) can handle the freeze without any trouble. The swollen buds are probably toast, but the canes may get through the night without to much damage.

We will see.

The general idea will be to select for late bud break, and cane survival. That isn't hard to do if there are 4 vines from a single cross, and one of the four dies back to the ground.  It is harder if there are 4 vines and only one still have a viable cane.  Do I remove the other 3?

I went through the vineyard marking all the vines that had leaves.  These are the most at risk.  I was struck by the dormancy of local vines.  They were the smart ones, still fast asleep.  The mustang, generally early to leaf was still dormant, only a little fuzz.  The local cinera was still dormant, but that wasn't a surprise.  I think all the local cinerea crosses were still dormant.  A couple of the Virginia cinerea crosses had put out leaves, though.  The champini and doaniana open-pollination (OP) crosses were largely leafed out. The few vinifera seedlings I've got were generally leafed out, too.

Deciding what to study as these vines develop this year will be an interesting challenge.  A number of these vines are going to have to go.

Approximately 70% of the seed pots have germinated at least 1 seed. We transplanted several cinerea x vinifera, and Zehnder x vinifera seedlings that Rich gave me, today. I got to watch a beautiful sunset.