The Grapes of Wine - no Wein...

I have had a full season of watching grapes grow in the vineyards north of Heidelberg. One of my primary running routes takes me north through Dossenheim to Schriesheim or further to Leutershausen or Großsachsen. Along the way I pass through vineyards. It is a very nice place to run, but it is not like running trails amongst nature. It is a paved path that takes me by many other gardens also.

Before I start a little background. According to Sven, the wine guy down the street, in the 18th century, someone decided it would be great to import grape vines from the new world. They did not produce good wine there, but you never know, perhaps the soil of Europe would be beneficial for the new world vines. The result was some really bad wine and a stowaway…a grub. The grub loved Europe and proceeded to eat its way through the roots the grapevines of Europe, destroying almost all of the vineyards. They attempted to cross the Euro vines with the New World vines, which did not help. Eventually, Euro stems were grafted on the trunks of New World vines. As you walk through vineyards here, you can see that the bases of the vines are distinctly different than the upper parts. I am sure if you walked through American vineyards you would see the same. The only place the grubs did not take root were in places of sandy soil.

Winter in Heidelberg was fairly mild until March. In January and February there mornings where I wore shorts and a t-shirt to run, but in March the temperature actually dropped and it started to rain more regularly. At the same time, the days were getting significantly longer and the trees and bushes had started shooting out leaves, but the grape vines remained dormant through most of March. Within a week at the beginning of April, the vines started to sprout leaves and stems, changing from skeletal trimmed stumps sticking out of the ground to live growing plants. Several weeks after the vines sprouted, I noticed that previously empty rows and beds had been planted with new vines.

During the first few weeks after the vines sprouted, I looked for flowering but the flowering of grape vines is not exciting. On the stem from which the grapes will eventually hang, there are little green buds, that is all. These buds are somehow pollinated (I did not see an abundance of bees) and turn into grapes. The distinction between Red and White grapes happens quickly. Within a week of being pollinated the grapes turn from bright green to either a dark red/purple or greenish white color.

During the summer while the vines work their magic on the grapes, delivering sugars and other goodies to them and there is ongoing human maintenance to the vines. The vines themselves are sprayed to protect from pests. I am not sure what kind of spray, but I was not picking off any grapes to taste them (which I saw people do). Also, the ground was sprayed to prevent the ground cover from growing. I am sure this is done so that the vines are not overgrown and valuable sunlight is cut-off. They also have a machine that trims the vines. The rows are comfortably wide enough to allow a tractor to travel up and down. The machine is drawn along behind a tractor (John Deere) up and down the rows and trims top both sides of the vines. Left unattended the vines would just continue to grow and I am sure this would divert precious resources from the grapes themselves. Later in the summer as the grape bunches got larger, I noticed that some varieties of grapes had a poly mesh strung along to help support the weight of the grapes (I assume).

Having spent the whole year watching the vineyards, we went on vacation and then home to Philadelphia in late September through the end of October. During this time period, most of the grapes were harvested. When we returned in November, the leaves had started to turn yellow and the bunches of grapes were gone, except for one bed of about 10 rows. These vines do not have mesh strung along the grape bunches now, but have a plastic sheet stretched along the length of the rows covering the bunches. These grapes are north of Schriesheim and I did not see them until I went on a longer run.

Grapes are planted in like beds of varieties. You can tell beds of grapes by the age of the vines or the shape and/or color of the leaves. The leaves of red grapes turn purple in the fall and not yellow. This fall, maintenance takes two forms, some beds are removed and the rest are trimmed so that all that is left is a trunk about 2.5’ (1.5 meters?) tall. Why are some beds removed? I have no idea. It could be that that variety only produces productively for a limited number of years? Or, the Weingut (winery) is not going to produce that variety of wine any longer? Based on the very informal survey I have taken, while running, about 5% or less of the beds are removed this year and a similar amount of new beds were planted in the spring.
Telling the age of a bed of vines is fairly easy, but what is a bed, how am I defining a bed. Remember, this is terminology that I have defined. A bed of vines is a grouped of a variety and is usually a minimum of 4 rows and each row is about 200-300 meters long. I have to assume, that planting beds smaller than that becomes unproductive, as there is a need for each variety to be harvested together. The stumps of new vines are the width of a pencil when planted and now at the end of the season are still not much larger. Vines in the second year are definitely thicker, but still very small. Older vines are much thicker, the bark is more course and they have may have moss and lichen growing on them.

This evening (Nov. 14) we will get to taste the outcome of all this work as Sven, our wine guy, is hosting a wine tasting at a local Art Gallery here in Handschuhsheim. Should be pretty nice!