Birdland Vineyards in September

It's early September and thankfully the Merlot grapes have changed color and are now a beautiful purple. The change in color of the grape berries is called "Veraison" and this is the transition time between berry growth to berry ripening.

The pundits are predicting a fairly late harvest this year but it seems that the grapes catch up and it will probably be at a similar time to 2010 when we picked on October 19th. The completed color change in 2008 was around Aug. 17th and in 2009 it was Aug. 31st but in both these years the harvest was towards the end of October.

We did, however, go round this week and remove any small bunches of grapes that were still green, as this green drop means that the sugar levels will be consistent rather than have some that are behind the others.

You can see a photo of our Godello grapes here.  They don't change to purple, being a white varietal, but go from green to a slightly golden color. As I've mentioned before we don't have much of a crop of them so just hope we have enough to make a little wine.

As harvest will be next month, I'll see you then, with lots of action packed photos!