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74 WINES&VINES June 2015 GRAPEGROWING WINE EAST Cultivating Marquette Like Vinifera Hybrid wine grape gets 'premium' treatment at Vermont's Shelburne Vineyard By Bill Ward S helburne Vineyard is one of just two wineries in Vermont to grow vinifera grapes. Instead, winemaker Ethan Jo- seph focuses largely on Marquette, a hybrid grape less than a decade old. Developed at the University of Minnesota and released in 2006, Marquette is a complex hybrid of V. riparia, V. vinifera and French hybrid cultivar Ravat 262. One of its grandparents was Pinot Noir. In many ways, Joseph treats Marquette like a vinifera grape, and the resulting wines have garnered critical praise including four Best of Show awards at the International Cold Climate Wine Competition. Joseph spoke Feb. 6 at the Cold Climate Grape Conference in Minneapolis, Minn., where he shared his winery's approach to growing and vinifying Marquette. Joseph says Marquette "is a premium vari- ety, and we need to treat it as such. From a wine-quality perspective, it's very important to our industry." Training Marquette Planted entirely in north-south rows and al- most exclusively trained on high-wire cordons (8- by 10-foot and 6- by 9-foot spacing) that are replaced often, the mature vines get bal- anced pruning and then leaf pulling shortly after bloom. "We call it 'vine swimming' because we're doing this," Joseph said, churning his arms like a freestyle swimmer. "This is an arduous task, but the benefits are enormous. You're going to get much better clusters, and they'll have their own microclimate." Winemaker Ethan Joseph calls his canopy management program 'more like a typical vinifera than a hybrid.'