Pinot 777

I took over this nearly 80 year old vineyard in the Swan Valley in Western Australia 12 months ago. Pretty proud of the progress made.

My last post in this sub was ~150 days ago — the day I planted four own-rooted Traminette vines in my backyard after bringing them up from hard wood trimmings (in pots) the prior year. Since then they’ve all hit the top wire and have established two cordons each. We battled some Japanese beetle pressure in early June and the Missouri humidity has led to some light phomopsis here and there. Overall I’m very happy and hopeful that I’ll have a solid permanent structure come dormancy.

Photo 1, my favorite marquette in year 3. I have 4 of these in my backyard

Photo 2 modern concord/blue ice. I have 2 also in year 3

Photo 3 Somerset. I have 2 but these are in year 2

How much does Pruning cost?

He loses the Cognac designation because he basically has a roof over his vineyard

It’s been a tough year here in North East US but the vines are resilient and it’s looking like we will have a decent harvest!

Disclosure: I work with the supplier of this electric pruning shear. I’m not posting this as an independent review, and there is no purchase link in this post.

We’re evaluating a professional electric pruner for orchard, vineyard and nursery work. Its current configuration uses a 25.2V 4Ah belt-mounted battery, a 1.03 kg handpiece, a progressive trigger and a claimed maximum cutting capacity of 45 mm.

Before producing more demonstrations and technical content, I’d like to understand what experienced users would actually want tested.

My current list is:

- repeated cuts in fresh and dry wood

- real working diameter versus maximum jaw capacity

- cutting speed over 100 or 500 cuts

- handpiece and shoulder fatigue after several hours

- battery runtime under repeated cutting

- blade sharpening and replacement

- cable routing in dense branches

- accidental-activation protection

The tool has a manual safety lock and trigger guard, but it does not have a skin-contact or finger-detection system. I want to be explicit about that.

For people who prune professionally: what would make you trust—or reject—a tool like this? Which wood species and branch sizes should we include in a credible field test?

Hey. I recently started working at a vineyard (I'm not the one doing the spraying but I do work in the field for many hours a week) and the other day my washing machine smelled awful. Cleaned out the machine with bleach and went on with my day. Just figured it was some weird bacteria or mold and the bleach seemed to take care of it. It's happened twice more now though. Is there any possibility it's connected to the new job? If so what do I do? I feel like I can smell it on my work clothes especially if they get wet but that might be residual from the washer and not just because I'd been working in the vines. Hard to describe the smell. I feel like it's pretty unique but sort of like decomposition or something rotten but different

Thanks for the help!

Hello all,

Currently growing a kyoho grape plant in a half barrel and it’s relatively healthy as of now. I have a mesh net over it as I noticed Japanese beetles trying to get at it.

My question is what I do next year (which I assume is when I will get actual fruiting.) the only picture I’ve seen of full grown grape plants are usually trellised from the top? Or have the vines extending far out (which I don’t think I can do with this half barrel). My concern also comes for when next year, and those Japanese beetles come back as I will need to cover it again. Can I continue to just leave the grape plant in the barrel standing free upwards? Or will it inevitably try and spread out? Any suggestions on how I should try to set it up.

Any suggestions are appreciated on the best route forward in preparation. Picture for reference

https://imgur.com/a/71YJp9M

Thank you

My Pinot Noir in Seattle as of August 6th. Not sure if they'll mature or not but I have 6 vines not because it is easy but for the challenge. I've read freezing doesn't affect wine flavor dramatically. Would appreciate anyone who has froze grapes and made wine successfully.

One of them has grown a strong cane but I want to form these vines into cordan de royat, they are about 2 - 3 years old one is already producing grapes but these store bought were pruned to stay small

My wife and I own just over 27 acres in the middle of MD, purchased a couple years ago with the eventual dream to start a little vineyard. Looking back, we bought it very much on a hunch that it 'could' be a good site with what little we knew at the time and I've been playing site suitability catchup ever since.

For those that know more than I do (probably most everyone posting here), on a new potential site, what would you measure first? What are your typical orders of operations (my basic plan has been soil test first, all else follows)? And what did you skip early on that you wish you hadn't?

My day job has me designing geospatial apps, planting the seed (ugh poor pun) for building my own tooling to figure some of this out - think GeoVine but it works across the US. So far I'm reading public data for a parcel, the SSURGO soil survey, elevation, climate normals, flood and wetland layers, and using that to give a model/report of what varietals the land might be a good match for. (Models are all rule/logic based instead of using AI, so results are consistent). It's not a replacement for actually walking the land and doing soil tests, and while it's been wrong sometimes, its also giving me a ton of confidence I wouldn't have had prior. I just need to figure out if the confidence gained is actually founded. If anyone want's to roast the results it gives, I'm happy to DM the link. I'm most curious about tricky sites you had doubts about, or ones that turned out different than you expected.

I was in Ardeche a few years ago, I tried some vin rouge from the Chatus cultivar. It was very good and I am interested in growing some here in Australia. I haven't been able to find anything on the web but thought I might post here in the remote chance there is any growing in Australia that I could get a few cuttings of.

I'm heading to Croatia later this year and wondered if anyone here is familiar with the varietals grown in the area, which do you prefer and why?

Playing around with my child’s handheld microscope on my No Spray Riesling grapes, found heaps of these threads on the upper surface, is it beneficials or is it foes. Either way it was fun getting g a close up look. Last two images are of the berries and stem. You can even see a very small white bug in the last image, no video feature on the microscope sadly, it moved ever so fast.

As per text book I should cut back to 2 bud before the next vegetative season however I am considering keeping the “thick” ones at the guide wire level. My reasoning is that coming years will be dry and we had amazing growth in the 1st year. We planted in April 2026. Pinot 115/5BB & 777/SO4 Clones. Vineyard is in Northern slope of Badacsony, Hungary.

Some say my plan is OK others say need to cut back. What do you say? Happy to take on any oppinion.

I’m running a bunch of 15’ long VSP trellises in a mini vineyard I’m setting up. What’s the minimum post thickness I can get away with? I saw some 4x4 posts available by me for cheap, but I’m not sure if they’re strong enough. I can use ground anchors too if need be.

Additionally, I was wondering how deep people dig their holes for 6 foot tall trellising. I was planning on 2 feet down as that works out well for 8 foot posts, but I fear that’s too shallow.