Pests and diseases

Control of pests and diseases is one of the most important –and controversial- aspects of viticulture. Some of them can seriously harm your vines, and thus yields, or even affect the quality of your grapes in a very direct way. Gray rot (botrytis) is one of the most feared, as it occurs shortly before harvest, normally after prolonged rain and periods of moisture. If not removed of eradicated, the rotten grapes give dirty flavors to the wine, and fermentation becomes much more difficult.

Keeping a vineyard in good shape is in some ways similar to keeping yourself healthy. First of all, a healthy soil and adequate nutrition are similar to eating healthy, nutritious food. Too much fertilizer, and the plant will grow in excess, much like your own stomach.

In general, plants with excess growth tend to create a lot of shade for themselves, where fungi and insects thrive. Very quick growth also gives thinner leaves and shoots that are less resistant to pests and diseases. Especially the incidence of grey rot is associated with an excess of nitrogen fertilizer.

But however healthy and robust your vines are, sooner or later they will be affected by some disease or other, that, if left untreated, will ruin your crop or even your vineyard. There are basically two ways of dealing with pests and diseases: using chemicals or not. The people not using chemicals are normally certified as practicing organic or biodynamic agriculture, and will never spray pesticides that were invented after the 1940s. I deliberately avoid the word “natural” pesticides in these cases, as they can still use (petroleum derived) mineral oils, sulfur, copper sulfates and other inorganic salts, some of which are not very good for the environment.

On the other hand, conventional agriculture has been relying probably too much on the use of pesticides, much in the way human medicine has been relying too much on antibiotics, leading to resistance of pathogens which makes their control increasingly difficult.

Personally, I think the practice of organic and biodynamic agriculture has shown us that that a lot can be done without the use of pesticides, however, practicing it dogmatically seems like missing the goal. Some of the sprays are not very effective, very expensive or even bad for the environment, like the copper salts used against downy mildew.

We're now boiling our own lime-sulfur as a general winter disinfectant. It is obtained by boiling lime and sulfur together for 50 minutes and then spraying it on the vineyard. It is caustic and smells bad, but otherwise pretty harmless, and avoids a lot of heavier sprays in spring. I found the recipe in a USDA manual printed in 1922!

Apart from trying to use as few pesticides as we can -saving a little money along the way!- here at Lagar de Bezana we try to increase natural health of our vines as much as we can. This year has seen the use of horses to eliminate winter weeds and add some natural fertiliser to the soil!

Otherwise, this winter has been cold and rainy, as it should be. While I write this, the Andes are giving me some beautiful sights in the afternoon.

Food and wine pairing

We're often asked what kind of dishes to served with the wines we produce. As we receive quite a few visitors for lunch during the year, it's a question we frequently ask ourselves as well.

To start with, the whole "science" behind food and wine pairing got a stir from research done in Japan, where it was found out that levels of iron in wine basically determine how well it pairs with fish. Wines with high levels of iron cause and unpleasant fishy taste in the mouth. Historically, red wine contained more iron than white wine, so that could be a valid reason for the recommendation of red wine with meat, white wine with fish. I get the same unpleasant sensation from eating apples after fish, and the browning of a cut apple apparently has something to do with high iron content as well.
This goes just to show how uncertain some of the established wisdom in food and wine pairing can be.
For those wanting to read the whole article:

http://news.sciencemag.org/asia/2009/10/why-fish-and-red-wine-dont-mix

At the winery we normally try to serve food that's in season, and if that happens to be asparagus, as is the case right now in spring, then so be it. Asparagus is difficult to pair with wine, but an absolute joy when fresh!
Otherwise, we favour lighter food, such as ravioli filled with corn (maize) with a tomato and basil sauce. Again, the tomato can clash with some of the wines, but normally they have enough acidity to cope well.
A wine with low acidity is the GSM (Grenache - Syrah - Mourvèdre), which is full bodied but not very tannic either. Lighter food but strongly flavoured, like mediterranean food such as fish or vegetables with garlic, anchovies, fresh herbs and so on, seem the best match.

During a recent trip to the United States, Ryan DiFranco of Difrancos.com in Denver, CO, paired our wines extremely well, the most surprising combination a lemon cheese cake with white chocolate with the Syrah Edición Limitada 2008. After Five years, the wine had become soft and rounded enough to pair well with the sweet flavours, and the lemon gave the whole experience a very fresh lift.

Another restaurant, near Grand Rapids, West Michigan, (unfortunately I forgot the name) prepared the best surf-and-turf I have ever eaten to pair with the Aluvión 2008 and 2002. In this case, the dish suddenly made sense, the earthiness of the shrimp complementing the meat and wine in the best way you can possibly imagine!

Tilling, fertilization and cover crops

Now that winter is over, I’d like to share a few thoughts on soil maintenance. It is difficult to understate the importance of the soil, as it sustains everything we grow. 
Since last year we’ve been ploughing the soil between the vines more and more as a means to aerate the soil and control weeds. Aeration is normally taken care of by worms and insects living in the soils and digging their way through them, but compactation by tractor wheels and a lack of plants to sustain soil life have made it necessary to plough. In order not to overdo it, we started by ploughing alternate rows.

The lack of plants to sustain soil life basically means the lack of weeds: their roots can help to break up the soil and feed insects and worms living in the soil. We’ve started to experiment with cover crops to observe their effect. The goal is to accumulate biomass in the soil, while at the same time trying not to have these crops compete to hard with the vines for water and nutrients. This means we favor plants that grow in winter, seed and then dry up starting in spring. Mustard is one such crop and has bright yellow flowers before the vines start budding.

To avoid competition for nutrients it's best to fertilize cover crops while you sow them. For ease of application and their low cost we use chemical fertilizers. There’s nothing wrong with them, as long as you don’t abuse. In the end, the cover crops, as the decay, will return these and other nutrients to the soil, which will favor the vines in the long run.

Otherwise, we use stable manure (from cows and horses) as fertilizer, which has the added benefits of adding organic matter as well as micronutrients to the soil, but is harder to obtain and handle, as quantities are big.

The only other (micro) nutrient we’ll be using this year is zinc, as the level in both soil and plants last year proved to be low. The plants only use minute quantities of this mineral, but the lack of it causes stunted growth and shatter of berries.

Alternatively, after ploughing, native vegetation starts to grow, and seems almost as beneficial for the soil as cover crops. Grasses and wild flowers seem to be the mainstay.

We’d like to see some clover or leguminous plants as well, so next year we’ll be sowing some of those, apart from the mustard seed. Other cover crops we tried were less of a success. Oats and vetch were mostly eaten by birds early in winter. Growing a mixture of grasses gave almost the same result as the grasses that grow here naturally, so that was a bit of a waste of money!

All in all, weed control is getting easier, as the hardest ones to control are being outgrown by these smaller ones in winter, and we’ve been controlling the former as early as we can, to avoid propagation.

Pruning has finished by now, and we’re busy tying down the last canes before budburst occurs. We just had some heavy frost that badly affected fruit growers all over the central part of Chile. Fortunately our vines bud a little later than most as this area is fairly cool, so we were not affected at all. Maybe an indication we’re growing the right crop in the right place?

And for those of you trying to find the winery, the gate is not green any more but now painted in “Lagar Red,” a color taken from the wall painting in our tasting room and now very distinctively ours!

The Chilean flag in the background is mandatory, to celebrate Chilean independence (18 September).

Pruning and beginning of winter

Winter pruning has started and the weather has been cold! Almost every morning the vineyard is covered with frost.

Meanwhile, in the cellar, we’re pressing off the last tanks and putting the wine in barrels. We bought new Radoux and Saury barrels, and 4 “demi-muids” or large 600 liter barrels for the Syrah Edición Limitada. Now is the time to decide which wine merits more new oak, and which doesn’t.

The pomace, left after pressing, in composted before it goes back to the vineyard, to enrich the soil.

This year we decided to plough the whole vineyard, to get some air into the soil, improve infiltration of rainwater and stimulate growth. We’re also doing experiments with cover crops. Last year that wasn’t such a success, as we were a little late with sowing and the soil wasn’t prepared well enough. Hopefully this year will give more results. The mustard is growing very fast, the oats have shown less signs of life. Apart from the utility, I like the way a ploughed soil looks in winter.

We’ve also been buying stable manure again this winter, as manure and compost bring not only nutrients, but also new life to the soil. There’s a nice pile waiting to be spread out in the vineyard.

Orders have been coming in from different parts of the world. At the moment we’re about to ship to Holland, Canada and the US. This is the first time we’re exporting to Holland, and our hopes are high! While we were preparing an order, it was raining cats and dogs. To make matters worse, the tractor wasn't able to handle the weight of the pallets. But with a little human weight added, that was fixed. Man and machine, what a combination!

The results from the photo session with Matt Wilson also came in. There have been all kinds of comments and discussions. This is one of the more controversial ones. Flanked by two beautiful girls from Santiago (our manager and her assistant), I was the dirty one who had to do all the hard work!

Apart from that, everything has been fairly quiet, which is just as well, as it’s been so cold and rainy. Today I sent the workers home earlier, as more rain threatened, and there wasn’t much left to do. Personally, I took shelter at home, intending to make good use of all this firewood!

Harvest 2013 and visitors

This week, the 2013 harvest has finally finished. This year took a little longer as there were a lot of grapes and we decided to make more wine than last year. More than double the amount of last year, as a matter of fact.

After a fairly cool summer, I expected rain to fall early in autumn, but so far we’ve only had rain twice, and it didn’t do much damage. Even Syrah, with its tight bunches, didn’t have any rot to speak of.

We only had some frost a week ago, which caused all the leaves to drop and made us speed up the end of harvest. Fortunately, frost doesn’t affect the quality of the grapes once they’re ripe (it does damage unripe grapes), but having them hanging in bare sun during the day can’t be too good either!

Meanwhile, in the cellar, the last tanks are slowly fermenting and the first wines are finished, have been pressed and put in barrels. Fermentations are quite slow, as the weather is very cold at the moment, which slows down the activity of the yeasts. This is not a problem, as it gives more time to extract color and tannins and evaluate the fermenting must. So far, colors are very intense and aromas are fruity and already quite expressive. Now we have to wait for malolactic fermentation to complete over the course of winter and spring to be able to evaluate, select and blend the final wines.

During harvest we had a few visitors, unlike last year, and they were a very welcome distraction during what was one of the longest harvests at Lagar!

Some of the most memorable were Janesse and Ben and their little son from “The Bottle Shop” in Colorado. During our visit to the vineyard, the dogs managed to catch a rabbit and tore it to pieces in front of our eyes! Animal planet live!!! I have to confess I felt quite embarrassed, especially for the boy, but that’s nature. We’re at the feet of the Andes, not in the middle of a big city. Apart from that it was a great visit, and I was sorry they couldn’t stay for lunch. Maybe next year?

Henry Hudson and Joaquin Perez from South American Boutique Imports arrived in the dark, and the electricity had fallen out. This happens a few times a year since the area is quite remote, but this was extremely bad timing. The staff had left already, since there was little to do in the dark. We had to receive them in a candlelit tasting room, which looked very romantic! Anyway, they didn’t mind too much and we had a great tasting. This is how the tasting room looks like when lit:

Another visit was from our importer in Corea, In-Suk Chung and his deputy manager Young-jin Choi. I had never had visitors from Asia, so we were a bit nervous at first, but what great people they were. Very knowledgeable and very sure of their tastes, more so than most Europeans who are supposed to come from the cradle of viticulture. Apart from sharing a very pleasant lunch including a bottle of the 2004 Aluvión, they handed us lovely gifts, which we didn’t expect at all! We’ll have to start working on our “Lagar” t-shirts to be able to retribute our visitors.

Our trainee, Isaac, and his wife and children left last Sunday for Peru and then back to Holland. They were great to have as company and a fantastic help in the cellar as well. We already miss them, but that’s the way harvests go. At the end of each one you have to say goodbye to all the people that helped so much and were an integral part of the process, but the rest of the year we have to make do by ourselves. After a last dinner (the picture shows what was left over, note the bottle of Inca Cola, Isaac has Dutch-Peruvian origins) they left for a last day in Santiago.

Just after the last grapes came in, the rain really started. We’ve only been doing some cleaning and labeling, as it’s raining cat’s and dogs. Speaking of dogs: they were all lying in their houses looking quite depressed, as they weren’t able to run and play outside. To add insult to injury, the vet came for their yearly vaccinations. The look on their faces said it all!

Bottling and beginning of harvest

Harvest has finally begun. This summer was a bit cooler than usual, and much cooler than 2012, so we started about two weeks later than last year. Although the shy has been grey a few days, and it has been menacing with rain, so far, only a few drops have fallen, so no risk of rot at all. The Syrah is looking even healthier than last year, which has us very happy. Temperatures can still get over 30ºC (86ºF) during the day, but at night we've registered temperatures as low as 1.5ºC (35ºF)!

Taking advantage of the last quiet moments before the harvest, I walked up to the hill of La Compañía last Sunday, to have a different perspective of the valley. Lagar’s vineyards are in the middle, at the foot of the first hill in the background.

Seen from the vineyard the hill looks like this, but I can assure it’s taller than it looks once you’ve tried to climb it! In the foreground the Malbec we planted last year. We can't wait to see the first grapes!

The first barrels for this year’s harvest have arrived, this time customized with the logo of Lagar! These are the 600 liter barrels for the Syrah.

The last two weeks we’ve been bottling about everything there was left in the cellar. Demand for our Cabernet Sauvignon Reserva has been very high, so we had to bottle a bit earlier than planned. This was a good thing, as this year we’ll be making a lot of wine, so we can use the extra space! Only the Syrah Edición Limitada and the base wines for Aluvión 2012 are left.

Despite me having a cold, bottling went very quickly and without problems. This is fairly unusual, as normally something fails, such as corks, capsules, cases or space to store all the bottles.

The neighbors have been a great help too: since one of our tractors broke down, they borrowed theirs, so Fernando, the vineyard manager, is proudly driving a brand new Massey-Ferguson this month. Unfortunately only for this month…

Our trainee for this year, Isaac, has arrived from Holland and is now fully integrated into the team and has proven to be a great help.

Apart from that, we had a bit of a rough start, this year. First, I suffered a motorcycle accident the weekend before we started (at last the limp has gone, only some bruises are left on the soul!), then, on Monday the must pump failed, putting our skills as electricians to the test, and on Tuesday the destemmer-crusher. This last machine, after more than three hours testing voltages, currents and circuits, was the easiest to fix, when the cellar master decided to simply change the plug! Meanwhile, the harvesters were almost screaming for more cases (they are paid per kilo), so even our team’s social skills were necessary to keep things quiet!

We started harvesting Syrah, and perfectly healthy, ripe fruit arrived at the cellar.

Here’s Isaac and Jorge emptying a case into the destemmer.

Most of the vines are still healthy and green, but the Teinturier plants are a deep purple red. They were the first to be harvested, and the accumulation of color in both grapes and even leaves is quite spectacular. Even Romeo, the dog in the foreground, was impressed!

Fermentations have started, so there’s a lot to do at the moment. Hopefully by next month I can give more details about this year’s harvest. Meanwhile, enjoy our Syrah 2010 that earned much praise in this Months Wine Spectator!

Beginning of ripening

It has been a while since my last post and there is a lot to be told.

There has been a lot of work in the vineyards, as this growing season has not been very easy. There has been rain in december and temperatures have been lower than average, and pressure of powdery mildew (the “good weather fungus”) has been high. We’ve been able to eradicate the few outbreaks we had, and the grapes have started to ripen, which means the end of the risk of new infections. Now we have to be alert for grey rot, or botrytis bunch rot, which can be a serious threat to the Syrah especially. Due to the cooler weather, we're about two weeks behind schedule compared to a normal year. maybe this means a more relaxed harvest, as not everything will ripen at once, like last year.

Last year’s experiments are showing good results:

One of the things we tried to do was to get a more even budburst and growth of the shoots of Cabernet Sauvignon. When pruned early, normally the last two buds left on a cane grow much more than the other ones (a cane having 6 – 8 buds). When the whole cane is left intact at pruning, and is shortened while budburst is about to occur, the shoots grow much more evenly.

The effect of a late re-pruning is slightly devigorating, not in the least because it promotes fruitfulness, and the fruit takes away energy from the plant. We therefore only tried it in the more vigorous parts of the vineyard, and we’re very happy with the results.

The first picture shows a typical Cabernet cane, with weak and absent shoots in the middle. Note the poor bunches in the middle as well, compared to the ones on the last two shoots (to the left).

The second one shows the result of the experiment: smallish, but good and evenly colored bunches along the entire cane!

Applying stable manure has also worked well for those plants which were not growing much. As a result, I observed earthworms last year, a sign of healthy, living soil. Only Carmenère is still a bit reluctant to grow, but there are signs it is improving. We need the roots to go deeper in search for water and nutrients. Last year we saw a shallow root system, and it will take a few growing seasons to promote new and deeper root growth.

Liming the soils has given good results too. Even though the soil is not poor in calcium, lime (calcium carbonate) can help to free nutrients and change the pH of the soil, which has a profound effect on the roots.

The last experiments have to do with a fungal disease which attacks the wood of the vine. The symptoms are stunted growth, with yellowing margins on the leaves, as can be seen on this picture. Note the healthy leaves and bunches on the right.

The fungus penetrates the wood through large pruning wounds, such as this one:

Unfortunately, the symptoms are only clearly visible in summer, but not when pruning in winter. To overcome this, we’re busy marking with a plastic ribbon each plant showing singns of the disease. When pruning, these plants can be treated differently. Basically, they’ll be cut or sawn off, until clean and healthy wood appears. The resulting wound will be dressed with fungicide paste, and hopefully the disease can be kept at bay.

Labor has been scarce, although so far we've had little problems. Only after bud burst did we have a little delay on the de-suckering. But the other day, driving through the village of Graneros, I saw these signs, virtually crying out for people to harvest fruit, like peaches and nectarines, that's ripening at the moment, promising generous weekly pays and so on. Clearly the gentleman sitting at the bottom didn't think this was worth the effort. Hopefully, by the time we harvest our grapes, he'll feel more enthusiastic!