I have been out of town since the early morning and this is the first time I've been able to sit down at my computer, all the while the gnawing concern of "You have that challenge, you can't miss a day," in the back of my mind.
I've decided that the best thing I can do to alleviate the stress of this is to simply write something, anything, and it might as well be about my day, and a little background for it.
I live on the Finger Lakes wine trail. At some point, when the weather is nice and the skies are blue once more, I will do a post or likely several posts about the wine trail, with lots of glorious pictures. And they will be glorious as the setting for these wineries almost all have incredible views of both Seneca and Cayuga lake.
The reason I mention the wine trail is because it involves what we do for work in the winter, and what I was doing today.
We are what you might call the first rung on the ladder toward wine making, as wine could not be made without grapes and grapes can not grow without grapevines being planted in the form of rooted cuttings that vineyards and wineries purchase from nurseries. And still there is one further and little known step, and that is those who supply the unrooted cuttings to these nurseries. In upstate NY, that is us.
Essentially our task is to go into vineyards after the buds have hardened off with the first frost and come behind the trimmers, removing the vines that are hanging on the wire or lying on the ground. We put these vines into piles down the long rows, then gather the piles into bundles, tie them up, then bring them home to our shop where we process them.
This particular year we lucked out, and the early part of the season had many warm and sunny days.
As the winter progresses we generally go from walking up grassy lanes to stomping through several feet of snow.
The processing entails cutting these vines down to between twelve and fourteen inches in length, making sure there are at least three to four buds per vine, then bundling them one hundred at a time with galvanized wire ties. These bundles are then stacked by ten in a pyramid form and tied with red rope. And finally these are loaded onto a truck and delivered to various nurseries, most of them in or near Buffalo NY. Though we do ship some up out of state as well, to places all the way from Texas to Vermont.
Today I went on a delivery to the nursery we supply the most cuttings to, located in Fredonia NY, along with my step-son-who does the driving-and a friend of his who likes to ride along and help unload.
I hoped you learned something new today, any questions you might have about this little known side to the business of grapes and wine, feel free to post in comments!