This initially affects the leaves which are gradually losing their green colour turning yellow then drying out and turning brown. If the vine is badly affected all of the leaves will change colour and the fruit bunches will turn brown and go crisp – no fruit. Not all of the vines are affected but a good proportion, if just slightly affected it will delay maturity, which means harvesting later with the risk of weather deteriorating. It will also have an incidence on the sugar content, our basic payment for grapes going in to the Cooperative is by kilo/degree, weight multiplied by potential alcohol (sugar).
The product that I use to treat this cannot be mixed with another product and if done with strong sunlight burns the leaves and fruit, it is not very expensive. There is another product that I have used which you can use with other products and spray any time but it costs 100€ to treat a hectare once.
I treated this vineyard on four occasions, three stating a 5.00am, the other during the day in light rain and cloud cover (rare here). You normally never spray in rain, washes off the product but with cloud cover and rain less risk of burning and any going into the soil has a slight effect also.
This year I have sprayed 8.5 hectares for chlorosis, all the other vineyards one or two preventive treatments.
After you spray the leaves start to regain their greenness.
Some close up views of one of our pre-pruning machine in operation. i control it by a joystick more recent machines have sensors and open and close automatically.
This is the machine I use to crush the pruned canes which I then plough in the ground for organic matter. It is old 1981 but still performs its task well, there are some design faults which have been rectified with later models, I think it is the oldest in the village others have had to be replaced.
This is the inside of the machine which I have modified, there are four rotating blades I have welded a piece of metal on the end of each blade which acts like a hook pulling in the canes.
Two views close to the base of the vine to see how well the new plough works.
We have finished installing the double wires that support the canes, there are four per line of vines, 3,400 planted at one metre that is 13,600 metres (13.6 km or 8.5 miles).
Two New Wines
Le Sablet Roussanne Blancand Les Amariniers Mourvèdre Rosé 2018.
We will be bringing them into the UK and offering them for sale this summer, they will be available from CentrAle at the beginning of August.
Unfortunately we have not been able to organise tasting notes but we will do this in the autumn.