Buying The Vines

In early March, 1999, I ordered thirty vines from Double A Vineyards in Fredonia, New York (www.rakgrape.com). As with many things, I found this site by searching the Web, not by traditional research. This means, of course, that I didn't "vet" the company, so I hope it turns out well. On the other hand, their website is well detailed, and the woman who answered the phone was competent and helpful. A good start.

On March 8, I received a call that the shipment was delayed a week. It seems that Double A tries to ship on a Monday, to reduce the chance that the young vines will spend time over a weekend in some overheated or frozen warehouse. The message told me that New York State awoke to a minus 6 degree reading that morning, and the vineyard decided not to ship that day. No complaints there. It was just as well, since I haven't finished preparing the vineyard yet (see Preparing the Vineyard ).

Choosing The Vines

I did some research before deciding on the two varieties of vines to acquire. You can see the list of books in the Bibliography. The primary source for the vine selection came from a chart in From Vines To Wines by Jeff Cox (Garden Way Publishing, 1985). In Part 1, Jeff lists a table with "Recommended Wine Grapes For U.S. Regions". I am aware that in Texas, we have challenges when it come to growing wine-quality grapes. Although the weather is dry and hot (often good for grapes), the soil is often heavy clay (bad for grapes). Of course, while Texas winters can occasionally be bitterly cold, long, prolonged, sun and heat is the norm for most (too much) of the year.

So, I was looking for vine varieties which were suited for the Texas weather. In other words, I was looking for vines which would do well here and which make passable wine, rather than hoity-toity vinifera vines which would probably do poorly - especially in the hands of an amateur like me.

After consulting Jeff's table as well as several other books in my collection, I settled on two varieties: Chancellor and Seyval Blanc. Both types are called "French-American hybirds". Jeff Cox says this about the origin of these hybrids:

The Evolution Of Modern Wine Grapes
Winemaking as we know it began with native European wines of the species Vitis vinifera.
Early explorers in the Americas found native North American grapes of the species V. labrusca, which seldom produced good wine.
Crosses between V. vinifera and V. labrusca were made both in North America and Europe to produce hybrids. Because most of this breeding work was done in France, many of these are called French-American hybrids. They were developed to combine the wine quality of vinifera with the superior disease and cold resistance of labrusca.
Today the finest wines are still made from V. vinifera varieties, but there are also excellent French-American hybrids that grow will in the easterm United States.
(From Vines To Wines, Jeff Cox, Garden Way Publications, 1985)

In any case, the Chancellor grape stood out as doing well in Texas for red wines, and the Seyval Blanc grape stood out as doing well in Texas for white wines.

I decided to buy 15 vines of each variety. Actually, I'm not a big fan of white wines - especially made here in Texas - but this is nothing if not a learning experience. Besides, I've heard that Europeans used to make (maybe they still do) cheap rosé wines by mixing whites and reds.

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