- [Curtis Smith] What better place is there to learn to grow your own vineyard than
in Napa Valley, California? With us today is wine maker, John Burtner. John, what is the most
important thing people need to know about growing their own grapes? - [John Burtner] To figure out what type
of grape you want to grow,` whether you're gonna try to make raisins, or grape juice, or wines for- I mean grapes for wines, those are the three things
you'd have to think about. - [Curtis] So there
are different varieties that do better for each one of those? - Exactly. - How can people learn which grape is best for which purpose? - I would say, talk to
your extension agent because there are different grapes for both jellies, and raisins and juices, as well as for wine, and they're all different. - And I notice there are a lot
of grapes on the ground here. What's that for? - This is the time where people are dropping crop, let me show you. Here's what I wanted to show you. You can see we've got quite
a bit of fruit on the ground, as well as quite a bit of
leaves and little branches. We've been--
- [Curtis] Pulling the fruit up here though. - Yes, very definitely, that's right. You want it exposed. You can see we're going
to veraison right now, so there's still some green left but most of the grapes are turning blue. - Veraison, now what is that? - Veraison is when, actually it's when the
grapes stop growing, they start turning color, the grapes start getting softer. Prior to this, last week these were all
hard little green units. Now they're starting to get softer, they're still quite unripe, maybe half ripe, but you're starting see that we're going through veraison, which lets us know we've probably got another thirty to sixty days max before we'll pick this fruit. - And that's when you're starting to come of then, thin 'em out? - Right, well we're just dropping crop, and making sure that we
have a balance in the vines, so that they can- all the nutrients can come up and we feed the grapes. We don't wanna have too many grapes just like we don't wanna
have too many leaves because otherwise all the nutrients are going to the canopy, and the grapes aren't gonna ripen. - [Curtis] That's why
I see some of the vines on the ground too, then? - Exactly. We're dropping crop and
we're also thinning it out. We're doing leaf pulling, get more exposure where we have the right balance of
leaf to vine essentially. Leaf to vine to grape so that, like I said, the nutrients go here
as opposed to up here. - Some of these look awful ripe. How can you tell when they are ripe? - Well, you can get a
refractometer, that's one way. You can do it by taste. These are handy little units that we all walk around
with 'em in our back pocket. You just take some grapes, squeeze out some fruit, and this is not a- it's a random sample. And these are around 15, 15 3. These will be picked probably
when they're around 25 Brix. - They've got a ways to go. - They've got a ways to go. - That's the measure of the sugar? - That's the measure of
the sugar, the Brix level. - How this refracts the
sunlight coming through. - Exactly. People use these for- diabetics use them for whatever, checking their sugar solutions. It's something that we use. If not, if you don't have one of these, then you're gonna start going by taste, - Yeah, a lot of people don't have that.
- and by feel. Are these expensive? - $75 on up, depending on
which model you wanna get. You can pay frightening amounts for them. - But if you don't have it
then you can just taste it? - You can taste it. Right now these are very high acid, there's very little sugar. Another way is- let me
get this out of the way- is to check the color of the seed 'cause right now, they're quite green. Once the seeds are getting riper they're gonna get brown. As they brown, they'll get
green towards the tips, and after that they'll
be brown all the way. So one of the ways, if you don't have the technology with you, is just to check the grapes daily and start looking for that. Like I said, we're weeks away at this point so they're very very green. - Now as you chew that, is it gonna be just kinda
gummy in your mouth? - Well, it's chewy. Gummy is a good word. It's chewy. As the grape ripens, those seeds will become like grape nuts, and I don't know if that's
where they got the name, but they literally, that's
what they will be like. They'll just crunch up and break up and you won't get that bitterness that I'm getting right now. - I see something else a
lot of you don't realize. The grapes are all right here where the vines have come from last year's bud. They're not up throughout
the vines, are they? - No. You set 'em that way so
that they get good exposure, they're easier to pick, and that way you have your canopy above 'cause it's performing the photosynthesis that's allowing the grapes to grow. - [Curtis] So they need some leaves to feed the sugar into the grape, but you don't need the
vines to be too long. - [John] Exactly. Too much vigor means all the nutrients are going the wrong direction. - And if it's humid it also then blocks airflow and you get diseases. - Exactly. You do some leaf pulling, you make it where the
bunches are more visible, you don't need too many around there. As you do leaf pulling, you're reducing the potassium, you're reducing the malic acid, you're allowing the grapes to breathe. There's less likely, like you said, if it's too moist like that, you're not worried about powdery mildew, things of that nature. - And you really have to know
how to do it for your area because in some places,
where you've got humidity, you wanna open it up. And others, where you've
got a lot of sunlight, you want little bit more shade. - Exactly. You need more shade. But still, that old adage, less is more, still comes down, same thing. You don't want too many leaves. They say anywhere from 10 to 20 leaves per cane per bunch is
just about what you need. But again, every vineyard is different, and you have to treat it as such. - John, that's a lot of good information. It'll help people get started. They can still get more information from their extension agent. - Without a doubt. - Thank you. - Oh, you're most welcome.