Bud Break to Fruit Set in Year 3

Spring in 2020 has been interesting, to say the least. On March 16th, we were told that Santa Clara County would go under a ‘Shelter In Place’ directive, which meant all schools sent kids home for ‘remote learning’, all places of business that were deemed ‘non-essential’ had to temporarily shut their doors, and all Apple employees were told that they would be working from home at least until April 15th. The far reaching impact of the COVID-19 virus has been surreal, and it changed the lives of many. We are very fortunate that I still work for a company that is responsible financially and has been able to treat its workers with amazing respect and care.

The silver lining in all of this is that I’ve gotten to spend more time in the vineyard, since I don’t have to get the kids up early to take them to school. I therefore have been able to watch and document the progress of the vines. Bud break actually happened on or around March 25th, and it started with the block of Merlot. The initial leaves pop out as

On April 8th, we can see that the leaves are really coming out and growing fast.

Bud Break3

And by April 17th, we had lots of shoot growth on all three varietals. We found out a lot of things in this timeframe: Our kids were not going back to school this year, Tax Day got moved to June 15th, and it would be at least until the end of May that I’d be going back to the office.

On April 25th, I noticed the first inflorescences, which are flower clusters that will later turn into grape clusters. Here’s what some of them look like before they start flowering:

Some of the terms may be new to folks who aren’t wine nerds like me, so here’s a great source for understanding the different parts of a grape vine and the pollination process: https://grapes.extension.org/parts-of-the-grape-vine-flowers-and-fruit/

It took several weeks, but the flowers bloomed into some really cool looking flower clusters. The blooming occurred around May 31st, and I was able to capture a couple of pictures of it. These were captured after what looks like 100% of cap fall.

Finally, in June, we have Fruit Set. The pollination has occurred, and you can actually see the berries forming! These pictures were taken on June 7th.