The Cicadas Are Here!

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Cicadas Are Here

This past fun-filled weekend we had to hurriedly prepare a spray for the vineyard, only to have our sprayer malfunction in the worst possible way — two strainers in the back blew out from the strain of the pressure.  Our air blast sprayer (produced by a company called Air-o-Fan) run at about 100 pounds per square inch, and the strain on the strainer takes its toll.  One blew out, and we thought, no problem, because we had one extra.  Drove back to the barn, put on the new one, returned to the vineyard, cranked it up — and the second strainer blew (there are two).  No replacement for that one, which mean’t no spraying that day.  We’re experiencing severe disease pressure — what to do?

Indeed, what to do?  We had a wine festival in Richmond the next day, and the day after on a plane to California to visit family and friends for a graduation at the University of Southern California, first swinging through San Francisco to see relatives and a fabulous dinner planned at Restaurant Gary Danko on North Point in The City (more on that later).  We’ll be away a week and can’t delay a fungicide application, with our Phomopsis problem lurking in the vines.  A few quick calls secured replacement parts (a half dozen) from the manufacturer, which will be overnighted, and calls to our beloved neighbor who tends to the fields and keeps an eye on things (but has never run the sprayer) took care of our other problem, which is to make sure we applied a treatment very soon, not that the rains have passed, for now.  Russell came on over 20 minutes after our rather frantic phone call, had a quick tutorial and instructions on operating the thing.  Many thanks to Air-o-Fan (and to Russell) for coming though for us!

Saturday proved a bit forbidding, with violent thunderstorms in the forecast that were to peak mid-afternoon.  But the storms missed us, and it was a rather pleasant afternoon at the Snag A Job Pavilion in Glen Allen for the Central Virginia Wine Festival, an event put on by the Richmond Virginia Tech Alumni Association, a fundraiser for scholarships for Richmond-area students attending Tech.  Fabulous cause with fabulous people running it.  And the volunteers!  We had teams assigned to us to help pour (they were in a word (and we’ll say it again) fabulous — such enthusiasm, such grace and good cheer!   And of course they loved the wine (how could they not?), and purchased several bottles on top of the wine we gave them as a thank you gift for helping.  The festival staff helped us unload, and when it was over they loaded us up to go (we were among the first out of there) — we felt like Princes.

Just before our sprayer mis-adventure on Friday, however, we looked down and spotted our first cicadas on the fence post at the gate to the vineyard.  We are due to have a massive invasion of the periodic cicada this year, an event we look forward to with curiosity and dread.  We didn’t see them in Richmond on Saturday, or up north in McLean on Sunday, but they are all over Annefield.  When packing up to depart the next day for the festival we spotted dozens of them in the grass and crawling up the side of the house, many of them just emerging from their exoskeletons.  Many that we saw had just emerged, with their crazy orange eyes, waiting for their shells to harden, milky white and vulnerable.  They haven’t started singing yet.

Our First Cicada Found

Nymph Shells

Dr Tony Wolf of the Alson H. Smith Jr Agricultural Research and Extension Center of Virginia Tech Virginia circulated a memo about them (and included an ominous note that there is a threat of potential spring frost on Monday in the Shenandoah Valley) advising what winegrowers need to do about the 17-year periodic cicadas emerging this year — in a word, nothing.

Periodical cicada spends most of its life as a nymph, feeding on xylem sap from tree roots. In the final year of development, nymphs crawl from the soil, climbing tree trunks or any other structure. During the night, the nymphal skin splits along the midline, and the adult emerges. Adults appear in mid- to late-May (a few individuals may be heard as early as late-April). They appear around sunset, males slightly preceding females. Males congregate en masse in “chorusing centers”. Singing peaks around 10:00 AM. Adults feed on a wide range of woody plants during the day; such feeding is apparently restricted to the females because the male digestive tract is rudimentary. Egg-laying begins about 2 weeks after emergence. Eggs are inserted into twigs in groups of 10-25; the slit into which the eggs are inserted is 1-4 inches (2.5-10 cm) long. Females may lay over 500 eggs. Oviposition peaks in the early afternoon. Adults are active for about 6 weeks. Eggs hatch 6-10 weeks after oviposition, whereupon nymphs leave the twigs and drop to the soil. Nymphs tunnel to the roots where they establish themselves for feeding.

What threat do cicadas pose to grapevines?  If you’re new to grape growing since the last emergence of periodical cicada’s you may think that the insects are causing significant damage, and your immediate reaction will be to ask what insecticide might be sprayed to keep the insects off your grapevines. While that’s an understandable reaction, my advice (TKW) would be to find something else to do and not worry too much about what the insects are doing. You are going to see shoot breakage and you may want to defer trunk and cordon establishment on young vines until next year, but grapevines are pretty resilient. Injury by egg-laying is a much greater problem than feeding is, but it’s helpful to realize that the egg-laying (ovipositioning) on mature grapevines is not as detrimental as it can be for young fruit trees or woody landscape materials, which you may wish to protect. The cicadas will deposit eggs in grape shoots and smaller cordons of the vine. Unsupported shoots often break beyond the point of egg-laying, but because this occurs relatively early in the growing season (June), lateral re-growth will normally compensate for the loss of a primary shoot tip. In older wood, the oviposition site typically heals.

Insecticidal control of cicadas is not very practical because of the extended period of emergence and activity (up to 6 weeks) and because insecticides would have to be applied very frequently to come in contact with newly emerging insects. Fine netting is an option mentioned in the above-cited Fact Sheet, but the economics of this approach with grapevines is questionable. Young (first-year) vines are a special consideration in that one is attempting to produce shoots to serve as trunks in the following year. One potential means of protecting the shoots would be the use of grow tubes, which would discourage cicadas from at least the first 24 to 36 inches of the shoot. Alternatively one might simply retain several shoots in the first year in the event that one or more shoots break during development.

They’ll put on a spectacular show.

Incidentally, at the Central Virginia Wine Festival, our newly released 2012 Annefield Vineyards Viognier was named best white wine at the event.  We last attended this festival two years ago (we had a conflict last year) and received the same honor.  We like to think they love us and we certainly love them.  Its a great event, a worthy cause, and we’ll probably be back. next year.  Go Hokies!

Hokie Fest

 

A Cool, Wet Spring Means Phomopsis.

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Bud Break

Bud Break, 12 April 2013.

Ah, spring!  Winegrowers have a different spin on that old ditty:  ”April showers bring May . . . Phomopsis.  More specifically, Phomopsis viticola, otherwise known as Phomopsis cane and leaf spot.  The weather this spring has been perfect for it — cool, wet days with relatively cool temperatures in the range of 59 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit.  We haven’t seen it in our vineyards for about four years, but this past week the tractor was being serviced so we had to miss spraying fungicides one week.  The infection seemed relatively small — just a few patches — but it must be controlled.  One can expect to see it anytime after bud break, which this year occurred around April 12 in our part of the world.

Readers of this space probably don’t care for the ugly details, but those interested in learning more can turn to any of several sources: Virginia Tech’s Online Guide to Grapevine Diseases and the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management Program are excellent, Cornell University has theirs, as do most every other university agriculture program.  The bottom line is it ain’t pretty, and if not controlled, it can ruin your crop.

How do you fight it?  You treat it the same as all of our other loveable fungal infections: downy mildew, powdery mildew, botrytis, black rot — with a fungicidal spray, applying once a week or so or after a heavy rain, being mindful of the limits specified on the label for the application of that particular product in a particular growing season.  There are a range of products effective against it, such as copper and sulfur (for those focused on organic production), but our personal favorite is a Dupont product called Manzate, which contains manganese and zinc.  The rules for its application vary by location and crop.  In California, for example, it is illegal to apply Manzate to grapes after bloom, yet east of the Rocky Mountains you can apply it up to 66 days before harvest (referred to as the “pre-harvest interval,” or PHI), yet for squash and melons, the PHI is 5 days.  Go figure.

However, all of these are contact products and need to be re-applied after the next heavy rain, and need to be applied again anyway to protect the growing shoots.  The inoculum overwinters in the vineyard, so a dormant application of lime sulfur is probably in order this fall and again before bud break next year.  This is also effective for botrytis and powdery mildew. Our usual practice is to combine two products in each tank mix — one that targets powdery mildew and the other downy mildew.  Fortunately the products that fight both of these are good for Phomopsis.  And for good measure, we include a tea of fermented Horsetail, as prescribed in Biodynamic practice for fungal diseases.  Whether it works or not is of course subject to debate, but it definitely can’t hurt.

No doubt Phomopsis is making an appearance in vineyards up and down the eastern seaboard this year.  This is certainly not the end of the world — we just need to be extra-diligent with our spray schedule this year to make sure we contain the infection so the disease doesn’t infect the fruit, and be prepared to spray in the dormant season to keep it from becoming established in the vineyard next year.

Six Inch Shoots, 3 May 2013.

Six Inch Shoots, 3 May 2013.

Taming the Festival Beast.

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Apple Blossom Festival Attendees

Beware the Festival Beast!

When the sun was sunken, he set out to visit
The lofty hall-building, how the Ring-Danes had used it
For beds and benches when the banquet was over.
Then he found there reposing many a noble
Asleep after supper; sorrow the heroes,
Misery knew not. The monster of evil
Greedy and cruel tarried but little,
He drags off thirty of them, and devours them
Fell and frantic, and forced from their slumbers
Thirty of thanemen; thence he departed
Leaping and laughing, his lair to return to,
With surfeit of slaughter sallying homeward.
In the dusk of the dawning, as the day was just breaking,
Was Grendel’s prowess revealed to the warriors:
A cry of agony goes up, when Grendel’s horrible deed is fully realized.
Then, his meal-taking finished, a moan was uplifted,
Morning-cry mighty.

-Beowulf

Almost two years ago we wrote an especially cranky post in this space about our experience with the Shenandoah Valley Hot Air Balloon, Wine & Music Festival at Long Branch, a historic house and farm in Clarke County, Virginia, just outside of the town of Winchester (“Those Blasted Wine Festivals“).  That three-day event occurs each October, so the cumulative effect of three very long days of nonstop work at the end of the season made it the “nail in the coffin” on working these beastly things.  Or so we thought.

This past weekend we were again in Winchester, only this time for the Bloomin’ Wine Fest at the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival.  This two-week event takes place in historic downtown Winchester which is in the northern reaches of the Shenandoah Valley. The wine festival opens the celebration and lasts just two days, so perhaps the cranky quotient was reduced by a third.  It was actually a great crowd, many gaily attired in pink and chartreuse, and we had some fantastic, enthusiastic helpers with us.  We couldn’t have done it without them (and if any of you are reading this, thank you!).

But for some reason when contemplating our evolving attitude about wine festivals, this correspondent immediately thought of  ”monsters.”  Why monsters?  In the mind’s eye its a big lumbering thing, ruthless and out of control, like Grendel in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.  The Latin root for “monster” is monstrum, which means “an aberrant occurrence” that is interpreted as a sign from the Almighty that something is wrong with the natural order of the world.  Drill down deeper, and we learn that the root of monstrum is monere, which bears a dual meaning: to warn, but also to instruct.

Every age has its monsters.  Beowulf, which dates from the 7th century, gave us Grendel, who in the passage quoted above carried away 30 Thanemen and devoured them.  The monsters of our age are more insidious, being nearly human (possibly dwelling among us unnoticed, like vampires), or formerly human, like zombies.  Funny how a decade ago references to vampires littered the cultural landscape, acting as a metaphor for the human condition — bloodsuckers on Wall Street, that sort of thing — while the horror metaphor of our times is the zombie, a mindless, soulless creature seeing human flesh for nourishment.

Is the rampant wine festival culture a phenomenon limited to Virginia?  Hoping to find a central repository of information on them, we had a look at localwineevents.com, which showed that virtually every state has them, and the larger wine growing regions have lots of them.  However, the listings on that website aren’t dispositive; for example, a search on the site found none in Kentucky (which has over 66 wineries), but a quick web search found several festivals in and around Louisville and Lexington.  Checking other states without listings on that site, such as Alaska and Hawaii, we found even more festivals, so clearly not all events are listed there.  If anything, this exercise shows that there are far more wine and food festivals than we realize, and that they aren’t an aberation — they may be the rule.  And if they are the rule, then they can’t be called monsters because they aren’t aberrations.  If anything they are simply unruly beasts in need of some discipline, so let’s call them the “Festival Beast.”

A wine festival is without a doubt an exhausting, arduous way of promoting wine that sucks the life from you.  ”Zombie” is probably the better metaphor because we do feel brain dead the day after.  And if one festival goes away, another rises in its place.  We get calls all the time from people organizing new ones to benefit some cause or promote some region or town.  Clearly there is no killing the Festival Beast, but we can try to tame it and live with it.   And like good wine zombies, we rise from the dead and keep on pouring.  Because we have to, given the realities of the art of selling wine.  What can we learn from the “Festival Beast?”

Taming the Festival Beast

What are the “realities” of the art of selling wine?  Look at it as a three-legged stool: (1) onsite sales direct to consumer via tasting room, online sales and wine clubs; (2) offsite direct to consumer via remote events (festivals and trade shows); and (3) wholesale (wine shops and restaurants).  All three have their challenges, but the offsite events are the most daunting, physically — the dreaded “Festival Beast.”

There are three recurring themes in our encounters with the public at these events, all related to that saying forever linked to the sale of real estate: “the most important thing is location, location, location.”  These questions can be summed up as “Where are you located?”  ”You’re awfully far away!”  and “Where can I buy your wine locally?”  Let’s have a look at each.

Where are you located?  Perhaps the measure of when we can stop doing as many as we do now (which aren’t that many, compared to many other wineries) is when we no longer hear this question: “Where are you located?”  That will show we’ve reached a level of renown that allows us to put our promotional efforts in other places.  Festivals are, in the end, exposure and advertising without the expense of a media buy and the advantage of reaching a narrowly focused target audience.  Even so, wine may be sold, and some events are “profitable” (translation: cash positive in the end), but others are not, and on those occasions when the value of what is poured exceeds the money taken in, that is when we strike that event from our list of possibilities for the next year.

You’re awfully far away!  Another constant refrain: the buyer who is disappointed by our remote (to them) location.  ”I’ll never be able to come visit because you’re so far away!”  Perhaps, but we ship it to you, and with online orders of six or more bottles, we provide free UPS-ground shipping to your door.  If you join one of our wine clubs, we will ship your allocation twice a year and you don’t even have to bother ordering. We’re licensed to ship to all of the states abutting Virginia (except Tennessee), plus South Carolina and California, so shipping to the average Virginia wine festival attendee is not an impediment.

Where can I buy your wine locally?  Some expressed dismay that we were not available locally, but there is an answer to that, too.  Tell your favorite restaurants and wine shops about us and insist that they give us a call, or have them contact our distributor, Williams Corner Wine.  Their contact information is on the bottom of the wine-stained tasting notes that hopefully made it home with you.

Since we can’t escape the Festival Beast, we’ve learned to live with it.  Other wineries have clearly given the matter some thought, such as one winery in Washington called Hedges Family Estate that bills itself as the “Guardian of Red Mountain” and the Red Mountain American Viticultural Area, though one wonders what threat concerns them.  Their logo is a forbidding looking crest with what looks like a grinning skull and a sword crossing a shovel.  Let this guardian be our Beowulf and take on the Festival Beast — our Grendel, Grendel’s mother and that dragon everyone forgets about that leads to Beowulf’s demise all rolled into one.  Last March the Wine Business Blog published their humorous and helpful “Rules for Attending a Wine Festival,” so those of you attending a wine festival this year, take note:

- Don’t tether your wine glass to your neck
- Don’t pinch your fingers and say, “Just a little.” Dump it if you don’t want to finish it, but I’m going to pour as much as I damn well please
- Don’t violently lift your glass mid-pour and say, “That’s enough.” Same deal as above.
- Don’t say, “Give me the biggest thing you have.” This isn’t NASCAR.
- Let “smooth” take the day off from your vocabulary… the whole day
- Don’t shove. I mean… really
- Don’t say you hate Merlot. We all saw Sideways. Guess what: Miles didn’t want to drink Merlot because it reminded him of his ex-wife. That bottle he drank in the end—his most precious bottle—had a ton of Merlot in it.
- Don’t tell every winemaker about the winery that was down the street while you lived in Lodi
- Don’t ask how the wine scored… ever.
- Do wear a “Wine’er, Dine’er, 69’er T-shirt
- If you are going to wear one of the those little food trays that has a cutout for your glass, you better be damn sure you are cool enough to wear it. Note: no one is that cool
- Over-buff late thirties guy: Don’t try to impress your date by contradicting me. You’re going to fail. Yeah, try me
- Don’t lick your glass… pig
- Don’t talk about your sulfite allergy. There is a good chance you have no idea what you’re talking about
- Don’t dump into the water pitcher. And always look before you drink out of it
- Practice spitting at home; it will come in handy
- Don’t talk about the legs after you swirl the glass. Here’s a tip: the legs don’t matter.
- Don’t take your heels off and puke in the lobby
- Don’t ask what the most expensive wine on the table is
- Keep the rim of your glass food free
- If you proclaim that you don’t like white or rose, we will make fun of you when you walk away
- NO Perfume! And go light on the lipstick, honey

Bridal Party

Tent

Festival Goer

Attractions: A Spring Garden Tour.

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Parterre

Historic Garden Week in Virginia began last week.  Known as “America’s largest open house,” proceeds from the house and garden tours go to the restoration and preservation of historic gardens throughout the Commonwealth.  For the voyeur it’s an opportunity to see the interior of some of the most interesting and historic houses in the United States.

We first encountered Garden Week in our pre-winery days, when we had such a thing as free time.  Back in those carefree days we had a house on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and with friends went on a tour of the places open in on Virginia’s side.  The most notable being Eyre Hall, which has been on the tour every year for many, many years.  The owner has such a tradition of hospitality that anyone who wants to may come visit and stroll through the gardens, which are essentially unchanged since the 18th century.  The property has been in the same family for some 12 generations.  The house itself is open only during Garden Week, and is not to be missed.  Other houses on the tours we made were equally striking.  We are still haunted by the dining room at one house that bathed the visitor in the most amazing shade of coral, and another house had the misfortune of displaying antique China on virtually every surface — and sadly, one piece met its maker during our tour, to the horror of the multitude crowding the room.

There are three tours close to Annefield in Chatham (Sunday, April 21), Martinsville (Wednesday, April 24), and Danville (Thursday, April 25).  By the time this post appears two of the three dates will have passed, but make a note to attend next year.  Since these locations are open during the week, it would be impossible to combine the garden visits with a trip to see us — but then, these are all-day affairs and one would likely not have the time.

Prestwould. Image courtesy of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

Prestwould. Image courtesy of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

So — let’s plan our own house and garden tour!  Only this one can be made throughout the season.

Begin with a visit to Prestwould, the magnificent  circa 1797 Georgian mansion of Sir Peyton Skipwith and Jean, Lady Skipwith.  Located just outside of the town of Clarksville, Prestwould is open to the public and is a landmark in garden history, being the creation of Jean, Lady Skipwith, the second wife of Sir Peyton Skipwith, seventh baronet.  Her papers wound up in Williamsburg and provide great insight into 18th century garden history.  Indeed, Prestwould is one of the best documented Antebellum plantations in Virginia, and it has one of the largest collections of slave writings in the nation.  We first wrote about the family in another post a couple of years ago; see that post for background on the Skipwith family (“The Clarksville Lake Country Wine Festival (and an Unrelated Ghostly Tale”).

The Saloon at Prestwould. Image reproduced from "Virginia's Historic Homes and Gardens", by Chuck Blackley (Voyageur Press, 2009).

The Saloon at Prestwould. Image reproduced from “Virginia’s Historic Homes and Gardens”, by Chuck Blackley (Voyageur Press, 2009).

The house and garden are fascinating, with the house being especially well preserved, though the foundation that has owned the house since 1963 lacks the resources to maintain the garden to the standards of the Virginia Garden Club.  In 1980 the gardens were restored with garden club resources and because of their inability to keep to the garden club’s standards, that organization released them from their obligation some years ago.  Nevertheless, the gardens are definitely worth seeing, as is the house with its amazing collection of early American furniture and decorative arts.

There are several noteworthy examples of French scenic wallpaper at Prestwould.  Pictured here is the Saloon, in which Humbert Skipwith installed a paper called Le Parc Français by the firm Jacquemart et Bérnard in 1831 and 1832 (the invoices survive among the Skipwith papers).  The dining room features another Jacquemart paper, La Chasse de Compégne, a hunting scene first printed in 1814, and the drawing room behind the Saloon (through the door on the left pictured above) is Jean Zuber’s Jardins Français of 1822.  Jacquemart is no longer in business, but the Zuber Company survives, and it possesses the original wood block prints of several of its 19th century scenic wallpapers and can print a set to order.  

Some of the simpler wallpapers at Prestwould have have reproduced by Scalamandre and is still available (do a search for “Prestwould” on the site to find them).  Exploring the house, gardens and grounds with its extensive outbuildings can occupy a good two hours, so plan to arrive early.

Follow your visit to Prestwould with lunch in Clarksville.  There are a number of places to choose from, but a favorite for its commodious shaded terrace is Cooper’s Landing Inn & Traveler’s Tavern in Clarksville’s Historic District.  Cooper’s doesn’t serve lunch on Saturdays, but they do serve brunch on Sundays, from 10 am to 3 pm.   There are a number of other places, but a reliable choice for a casual lunch on Saturdays and Sundays is The Lake House a few blocks east of Cooper’s on Virginia Avenue.

Photograph courtesy of MacCallum More Museum & Gardens

Image courtesy of MacCallum More Museum & Gardens

From there, make your way to Chase City to see the MacCallum More Museum and Gardens, which has evolved into a cultural center featuring a  permanent display of Indian artifacts and other items of local interest, and eclectic forma gardens featuring architectural elements from all over the world that were collected by Lucy Morton Hudgins, the wife of Edward Wren Hudgins, a former Chief Justice of The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, and expanded by her son, Commander William Henry Hudgins, in the 1940s, 1960s, and 1970s.  The house and grounds were recently placed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register.

Conclude your visit with a stop at Annefield and share a bottle of wine with a friend on the terrace overlooking the garden in the back of the house.  Our own garden is coming along — the parterre is filling in nicely, though something happened to the yellow tulips we planted in 2011 (Tulip Monsella) — the squirrels must have consumed them.  We do love the red tulips (Sky High Scarlet) dramatically bobbing above the grey-green foliage of the lavender.  We’ll have to plant more this fall.

We’ve been waiting for the boxwood to gain a bit of mass before bringing some shape to it, and this year the plants are finally touching, so we will prune the boxwood this year.  Traditionally the summer hedging takes place in England on Derby Day at Epsom, which is always the first Saturday in June.  The gardeners picked that day because the Master of the House would otherwise be occupied with the races and not interfere, which makes perfect sense.

Prestwould Plantation, 429 Prestwould Drive, Clarksville, Virginia 23927 (434) 374.8672 (open May through October)

Coopers Landing Inn & Traveler’s Tavern, 801 Virginia Avenue, Clarksville, Virginia 23927 (434) 274.2866 (Sunday Brunch only)

The Lake House, 335 Virginia Avenue, Clarksville, Virginia 23927 (434) 374.4646 (lunch on Saturdays and Sundays)

MacCallum More Museum & Gardens, 603 Hudgins Street, Chase City, Virginia (434) 372.0502 (Gardens open daily 10 am to 5 pm; Museum open Monday through Friday 10 am to 5 pm, Saturdays 10 am to 1 pm.)

Annefield Vineyards, 3200 Sunny Side Road, Saxe, Virginia 23967 (434) 454.6017 (Annefield is open to the public on Saturdays, 11 am to 5 pm, and on Sundays by appointment.)


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Parterre