The drier conditions we’ve had in Wisconsin this year are great for wine grapes, according to Peter Botham of Botham Vineyards in Mount Horeb.
The fruit started coloring in early August — a process called veraison or the onset of the ripening of grapes.
Botham says he’s still scouting for pests and disease up until the day they harvest in mid-September. The challenge is that if they miss a problem, they have fewer tools to mitigate pests or diseases because you cannot spray close to harvest. He expects two tons of grapes per acre — an ideal amount. He has about seven acres.
Botham says the spring was terrible for growing grapes — too cool and too damp for too long. The early heat wave brought the vines back to normal, and the remainder of the summer was good for the fruit. The late arrival of summer also meant there wasn’t any frost damage, which helped crop volumes dramatically, Botham says.
“Grapes are kind of a dry-loving plant, and they don’t need nearly the volume of water that my neighbors need for corn and soybeans,” he says. “So a drier summer kind of works in our favor. We’re off right now a little bit in rainfall. It’s probably somewhere between one and two inches on normal. We’re down and for me that’s actually great.”
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