Against all common sense, we’ve decided to plant more grape vines! So right now, we’re soaking the roots of 3000 new Cabernet Franc and Pinot Gris vines in water. James Wiens came from Niagara this week with his big planting machine to put ’em in the ground, but the rains came and the clay soil […]
It’s not a weekend out at the vineyard without something breaking. This weekend I was happily weeding my grapes with this piece of equipment, an Ostraticky grape hoe. Driving up and down the rows with the hoe is mind-numbingly slow: there are 68 rows and it takes 5 minutes a row. After a few hours
Ostraticky Grape Hoe Read More »
Three of our wines are now VQA approved! Pinot Noir 2013, Pinot X2 2013 and Chard 2013 (the Chard is still subject to label approval — a tiny tweak is necessary — but passed the VQA taste panel and the laboratory analysis). We don’t have labels printed yet but what the heck, we thought we’d let
VQA PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY VQA Read More »
They say Pinot Noir is tough to grow, but last year we struggled with our first crop of Chardonnay… “This vineyard is a write-off!” shouted my vineyard employee (I’ll call him Bob) and stalked out of the Chardonnay to go work on softer ground in the front vineyard. Even the hardiest of workers can get frustrated when
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People keep asking, how dd the grapes do this Winter? I won’t exactly know until the buds break, but I think we in the County survived OK. We go to such enormous effort each Fall to heap soil over the vines to protect them from Winter. This year, frost came into the ground so abruptly, I
Arctic Vortexes and Survival of the Vines Read More »
Come into our tasting room this summer; we’ll talk about passion and the pursuit of big ideas while you try our delicious 2013 Chardonnay . On Saturday the Ontario Wine Society was kind enough to invite Broken Stone Winery to share our wines and our vision at an event in Wellington. We rubbed shoulders with other City refugees
It’s been the coldest Winter since we started this venture five years ago. Any canes that remain above ground are certainly dead from the cold. We’ll remove everything exposed above ground when we start pruning in a few weeks, and then unbury the protected canes. Yahoo… we’re looking forward to getting started for another season!
Waiting for Winter’s End Read More »
“Wassail” — three end-of-season weekends to celebrate another year in the vineyard — came and went with a flourish of revelers and repeat customers. Our first year as a winery is writ. We will look back at these days with nostalgia. For now, the tractor is quiet, and the vines buried, asleep under a
“It’s minus ten Celsius. Sure, the ground is frozen, but it won’t hurt to try burying the vines. It might work –right? With the tractor reverse gear repaired, I headed out to the field one fine Saturday to attempt hilling up for the second time. It seemed to go well, although the hard soil made the tractor struggle
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