Grape to Glass : The Growing Season
While the fall harvest is certainly a busy time of year for California’s wine-grape growers, winegrowing is a year round process. Each season, growers have specific sets of practices and maintenance they must carry out in the vineyards to ensure the highest quality grapes possible.
Photo credit: Russian River Valley (Warren H.W. White)
Trellis
A frame supporting open latticework that provides support for vines and other climbing plants.
Summer
Summer marks the arrival of grape clusters, which begin forming on the vines as the leaves soak up the summer sunshine. Growers are still hard at work training vines on to the trellises to make sure the grapes get the right amount of sunlight to ripen. Vineyard crews also remove any extraneous leaves so the vines can put all of their energy into producing grape clusters instead of leaves. Around August, the clusters begin to soften and start to show some color, a growing stage known as veraison.
