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.

Seedlings 2-23-13

Seedlings are making progress:

Here is a photo of John Barnett's seedlings:

Here is what the greenhouse looked like, today:  This is representative.  A lot of pots have little activity, but some are a riot.