Vineyard Happenings
The grapes in Texas vineyards are showing that 2024 will be another outstanding year for Texas grapes. Texas is unique since we have two distinct grape harvests. Hybrid wine grapes are grown along the warm, humid Texas Gulf Coast with the Classic vitis vinifera grapes further inlands. Grape hybrids like Blanc du Bois do exceptionally well with the Gulf Coast warm nights and humid days along with the widespread Pierce’s Disease. Blanc du Bois grapes will be harvested this week and next week since the bud break on these grapes is as early as February providing four months of development in the Texas Gulf Coast sun. If you want to experience a grape harvest, sign up at Wild Stallion Vineyard on West Rayford Road in North Harris County for their Saturday morning harvest, beginning at 8 am on June 29th. Bernhardt Winery will be having their harvest of Blanc du Bois on Saturday, July 6th starting at 8 am with a grape crush afterwards. These grapes should have about 20% sugars in the juice, compared to 8 or 9% sugars in store-bought grapes. Haak Winery in Galveston County will also be harvesting their Blanc du Bois grapes, but they have had more rain and need further development. Messina Hof in Bryan will be harvesting their Lennoir grapes in July for their Port wine.
Further inland, the classic vitis vinifera grapes have bud break two months after the Blanc du Bois. Those inland grapes provide a wider variety of grapes and hence grape characteristics evolve for the timing of the harvest. Some grapes are slower to evolve as their fruit develops. From Kuhlken Vineyards comes this report, “This spring and summer have been full of intense storms and heavy rains in the Texas Hill Country, and throughout most of the state. They may be scary to drive in, but our vines couldn’t be happier with all the extra water. Coming out of the drought of the last few years is like a breath of fresh air. However, with heavy spring rain comes every vineyard manager’s nightmare: golf ball sized hail. Hail can cause major devastation to young green shoots and clusters. Thankfully our vineyard is located in the Bell Mountain AVA on higher elevation, so we made it through hail season unscathed. Of course that isn’t always the case, but we’re grateful that it was this year. We have hail nets on most of the vineyard and plan to finish putting the rest of them out this coming winter. We are just beginning the veraison stage of the growing season which is always an exciting time because it’s when we can really see how much fruit we will be able to harvest in July and August. For now, our early ripening varieties like Temperanillo and Alicante Bouschet are turning purple and developing a little sweetness. The Mourvedre will take a little longer since it’s a late ripener, but it won’t be far behind. As we move closer to harvest I hope the rains slow down a bit because too much moisture can lead to increased risk of disease and bursting berries, however I don’t see that being an issue knowing how Texas summers are. It’s been a great growing season thus far, and we’re excited to watch our vines continue to thrive”
Brian Heath of Heath Family Brands (Owners of Grape Creek Vineyards near Fredericksburg) told me, “We’ve had an excellent growing season so far for our vineyards in the Hill Country as well as in the Texas High Plains. The regular rains this season have afforded good canopy development and most of our vineyards were fortunate to avoid the destructive hail that came with the spring thunderstorms. Our vineyard teams have been diligently tending to the vines to promote excellent quality in the vines and fruit. To open up the fruit zone we have leaf pulled and have also hedged the vines to contain vigor. The shoots and clusters have been thinned allowing the fruit to better develop and mature. At this point in the growing season, we anticipate the harvest timing to be about average, which would mean beginning to harvest white grapes in late July or early August and reds late August or early September.”
It certainly looks like another great year for Texas grapes and hence Texas wines!