Vines Budding

That time of year again.

I noticed a few vines in the top row are starting to have buds that are beginning to swell! This can only mean one thing. Bring on spring time. 17/08/2019.

Will try and take photos every couple of days, to show growth.

Port wine

Found a bottle of  2009 Blackberry sweet wine in the cellar, while doing a clear-out. So thought I'd try and have a go at turning this into a Port wine! Found a demijohn of 2017 Merlot, and combined these, with some Oak wood chips. Something happened as the Port wine was very clear, and yet I could see that it started working again.
Gave the Oak chips a couple of weeks to do their work, then raked them off. To this I added one litre of Brandy. It continued to keep working, but within 2 days, the alcohol did its work and the yeast stopped doing its stuff. Can't wait to try this out.

This first photo shows the Blackberry and Merlot, ready to rack into the five litre Demijohn. You can also see the one litre of Brandy, ready to go in.

 I marked off the Demijohn, to help with the correct amounts.

 I labelled the Demijohn, so as to not to bottle it as normal wine.

I know that it is not the correct way to manufacture Port wine, but I'm a creative person still in my old age! Time will tell. Should make six bottles (750 ml) of Port wine.
Will have to create a new Port wine label for these, before bottling time.

 Have called this a vintage Port.

2019

I retired from work this year, with my health in decline.
Have been working in the Vineyard most days. Now all of the pruning has been done, the vines are looking good. Have tried again to graft onto the riparian root stock (RS) some Merlot. These are to take place of the vines that died, due to wet feet I'm thinking. I rains a bit here in the winterless north. Watched a few videos on Youtube and saw one were a guy cut into the RS, half way from both sides, staggered of course. This helps stop the bleeding when trying to graft on further up the vine. It works, as soon as I made the cuts, the vine started to bleed from these. The grafting was done onto last years wood.
To help prove that this could work, I did a few without the lower cuts. Labelled these (1) onto the grafting tape with a permanent marker. Then all the later ones I did I marked with (cut).
The lower cuts when first bleeding, ran clear. But these cuts now show, a whiteish  bleed. This appears to be slowing down as well.
The buds on the grafted Merlot, seem to be swelling now (16/08/19). So will keep an eye on these.

 The cuts bleed shows white now.

 Grafts shown here, were done a various times, during winter time.

 Have marked (cut) onto the grafting tape. This was hard to do onto the flexible tape!

 Four different views of the grafting shown here.

I have been trying to graft onto to these RS for a few years now with no success. This is the year, I'm hoping.
Will keep posting new photos this year. I'm hoping that the grafts will take.