I haven’t looked in on last year’s cherry wine since July, when I noticed a problem with the acidity. The total acidity (TA) was too high, which I would ordinarily address by neutralizing some of it. The pH was high as well, and that made my job tougher. If I went ahead and neutralized some of the acid to get the TA down, I would also be raising the already-too-high pH. So my thought was to leave the acid alone and balance it with sugar. Maybe I can get some advice on this - and find out if any of the shops around here carry Ten Spoon’s cherry wine!

A La Nina weather pattern gave us the cold weather in March and April, but it will weaken and have a negligible impact in June. So says the Climate Prediction Center, a part of the National Weather Service. Hopefully that will translate into normal summer weather.

So if, for whatever reason, you’ve got some wine that you can’t finish for a while, put the cork back in and freeze it. It will survive in fine shape and, who knows, might even improve.

I’ve heard stories of people fibbing to get a shipper to deliver their package, but I wanted to see if it could be done honestly. Our little experiment could have been a fluke, but shipping hundreds or thousands of packages, from and to many different cities, is a bit much for me to try. So I’ll go by what I can do, which is read the terms and try the experiment. Based on that, I’ll venture a tentative “yes,” you can ship homemade wine via commercial shippers (again, not the US Post Office - I don’t know why, but you can’t).

Have you shipped homemade wine (or mead or beer)? I’d love to hear about it. Just leave a comment at the end of this post.

Scaling up a greenhouse

Jeff Chorniak inspired me to grow grapes in my suburban backyard and he used a collapsible greenhouse to extend the growing season. By sheltering his Cabernet Franc in this way, he made early spring and late fall just a tad warmer, and that can make all the difference when you’re growing grapes in Toronto. I’ve never done that myself, but the possibility of a cooler than normal season has me thinking about it. I’ve also wondered if the concept could be applied to a vineyard, by using plastic sheeting the way gardeners use row covers.

Some Puget Sound growers are doing just that. I’m hearing that overnight low temperatures, inside a tented vineyard row, are as much as 10F (5.5C) warmer than neighboring untented rows. On a clear day, under bright sun, it can get up to 15F (8.3C) warmer. “As much as” and “up to” are always tip offs that typical performance will be less, and that’s probably true here. Still, every degree helps and this might be a good way to cope with a cooler than normal year.

Don’t ask, don’t tell?

Both of us had a similar experience when we shipped our wines. We packaged up the wine at home and presented the sealed box to a shipping clerk, who never asked what we were shipping. I made up my mind before hand that I wouldn’t lie, and if asked, I was ready to tell him that I was shipping some of my homemade wine to a friend. He was only interested in two things, however, my credit card and whether or not the value exceeded $100.

I did have to fill out and sign a “shipping order” form, which had a space for me to list the contents of the package and some other details. The clerk handed it to me and said he just needed my name, phone number, and signature. Its possible that a different clerk would have required an accounting of the package contents, but our experience is that they don’t care what’s in a plain, ordinary package.

I expect the package to arrive in about a week, and I’ll post an update when I hear about it.

Update 5/18/2008: Success!

The two meads I shipped arrived safe and sound.

Left to themselves, grapevines will push out more clusters of fruit than they can ripen well. Making wine from such grapes will be disappointing: not enough sugar, poor flavor, too much acid. The problem is that a given vine can only pull in a finite amount of nutrients through its roots, and only produce a finite amount of sugar in its leaves. Divide that finite amount by an increasing number of grape clusters, and each one will have less and less. At some point, “more” becomes “too much” and you’ll get a large crop of poor grapes that will never produce anything but poor wine.

Yes, and that’s the problem

Grape vines will do this because they’re not trying to make wine. All they want to do is produce something that animals find more appealing than a nearby twig or blade of grass, and they want to produce as much of it as possible. Ok, they’re not self aware, and therefore aren’t really trying to do anything, but we are. We’re trying to make wine, and the tendency of the vines to produce as many grapes as possible gets in the way of that. So, part of the reason we prune them is to reduce the yield down to something that will ripen well. Sometimes, even after pruning, the vine will push too many clusters, and that’s when we need to thin. Another approach would be to prune less aggressively than normal, then thin to keep the vine from overbearing.

A specific deadline

You can’t just lop off nearly ripe clusters of fruit in the fall and call that “cluster thinning.” To get the most benefit from this technique, you need to thin the clusters before the flowers open. Its probably true that there will be something to gain from a “better late than never” approach, but it won’t be much. Timing is critical here, so monitor your vines closely after bud break and make sure you thin before the flowers open.

And a fuzzy target

If you don’t like deadlines like that, then you’ll be happy to know that the idea of how much to thin is a lot more vague. I’m going to have to punt here and say that “it depends.” It depends on the varietal, your location, the year to year climate variability, and your own goals. You may be able to find advice, from other growers in your area or from books, about how many high quality clusters this or that varietal can produce in your area. In the end, though, nothing can substitute for experience with living vines in your vineyard. Get to know your vines by trying fewer clusters this year to see if that improves the quality, or advances ripening. Maybe try a few more clusters to see if that boosts yield without harming the wine. Knowledge like that is priceless and will help you make better wine from your own grapes.

Further reading

Cluster thinning is aimed at efficient use of sugar in the vine. My last article on canopy management was about leaf pulling, to promote efficient sugar production in the vine. These two goals are opposite sides of the same coin, so if you missed the first article, you might want to click here and check it out. To make sure you don’t miss future articles, subscribe to this blog. Its simple, its free, and you’ll see every article without having to check back manually.

I’m still learning about canopy management. I’ve gotten a lot out of Jeff Cox’s From Vines to Wines. It’s where I first read about cluster thinning, and I still refer back to it. What makes it a great book for the home winemaker who wants to grow his own grapes is that it covers both topics really well. The first part of the book covers the viticulture, from which vines to plant, site selection, pruning and training, and pest management right through harvest. The second part picks up right where the first part left off and talks your through making wine from the grapes you just harvested. From primary to finishing and ageing with troubleshooting information and a section on tasting.

And you thought fish stories were strange

Someone entering a competition, packaged up his entry in a box that was clearly marked as containing wine. It might have been that he bought a case of wine and reused the box; I’m not sure about the details. At any rate, he was shipping it to a homebrew shop or winery with “wine” in the name. These two things caught the attention of the shipping clerk, who asked if he was shipping alcohol. The man lied and said he had bought marinade from the gift shop and was returning it. The clerk asked a few more times, in a few more ways, if he was shipping alcohol, but the man stuck to his story. The clerk accepted the package, and the man left, but he got a call that evening from the clerk. It turns out that the clerk called up the place and asked them if they sold marinades, they said no, and he wasn’t going to ship it.

On the other hand, one person reported calling up a shipping company and asking what they should do to ship homemade wine. He was told to open an account, package it up, and request an adult signature. The most common thing I hear, though, is people labeling their packages as “grape juice” or “vinegar.”

What does UPS say?

I decided to have a look at the UPS web site to see if I could find anything definitive and came accross something called the “UPS Tariff/Terms and conditions of service for small package shipments in the United States.” It wasn’t easy to find. There were all sorts of links to create shipping paperwork online, create an account, track a package, read about freight and international service, but nothing about terms and conditions. Then I looked at the site map, and at the very bottom of the page, I found the link.

A 48 page maybe

So what does it say about shipping alcohol? To find out, I searched for “alcohol” in the 48 page document and found “Section H: Alcoholic Beverages,” which comes right after the section on things prohibited by law and just before the sections on biological materials and firearms. In case you were wondering, biological materials are ok, as long as they are “prepared in accordance with all aspects of 49 C.F.R. § 173.199.” Firearms are ok too, “from and between persons not otherwise prohibited from shipping firearms by federal, state or local law.” Homemade wine might be ok, but homemade beer is not. After droning on about shippers that are licensed and authorized to ship alcoholic beverages, the document states flatly, “UPS does not accept packages containing beer or spirits for delivery to a consumer.” Beer or spirits? Does that mean wine is ok?

An experiment

The truth is that the 48 pages of legalese isn’t clear cut, so a commenter to my blog (best not to name him, I think) and I are going to experiment. He’s sending me some of his wine, and when (if?) it gets here, I’ll send him some of mine. I’ve picked out the wine that I’m going to send him, and I’m nervous and excited at the same time. Hopefully this story will have a happy ending. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’d love to hear about your experience or insight into shipping wine. Just leave a comment at the end of this post.

Update 5/1/2008: Almost there!

I received the two bottles of wine and shipped out two bottles of mead. The wine made it here in great shape; let’s see how things go with the mead.

Update 5/18/2008: Success!

The two meads I shipped arrived safe and sound.

Leaves in the shade: Like open windows with the AC on

The idea behind leaf pulling is that a leaf in the shade isn’t just idle, it’s holding back the vine by consuming sugar and nutrients that could be going to productive leaves or fruit. So if you pluck leaves that are in the shade, or those that shade other leaves, the vine will still get almost as much benefit from photosynthesis as before, but will not have the drain of non-productive leaves. Done correctly, this will mean better fruit. It might even mean earlier fruit.

Fruit in the shade: A more complicated trade off

Sunlight affects ripening fruit in different ways. Too much can burn, and not enough can delay ripening. Here, leaf pulling decisions are more tricky. What do you do about a leaf shading a grape cluster? If you pull it, the cluster will get more sun, but at the cost of reducing photosynthesis and sugar production. I don’t know that there’s a this-always-works-answer here. In cool seasons, the risk of burning may be less so you might be more inclined to pull leaves that shade fruit clusters. This might also be true later in the season, after the hotter July and August days are behind you. On the other hand, it’s those cooler seasons, or times of year, when you want to turn every photon of light into sugar. For what it’s worth, I’m planning to pull leaves for maximum photosynthesis through the hot summer, then open up the clusters to sunlight in late summer/early fall.

The flip side of maximizing photosynthesis is making the best use of the resulting sugar. I’ll talk about doing that with cluster thinning in my next canopy management article.