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January 2017 WINES&VINES 135 PRACTICAL WINERY & VINEYARD GRAPEGROWING ERROIR at most six—cuts for the pruned wood to be free for removal and deposited in the tractor row for shredding. The flexibility of the canopy in Babcock's PCS leads to a 50% reduction in man hours for mechanical harvesting. "With my old VSP system, the crop was down low to the ground," Babcock explains. "VSP has metal stakes (line posts) that are 3 to 4 inches wide. Because the line posts were so thick, the harvester had to hit them extremely hard to shake the fruit off. It was hard on the equip- ment and very slow. "In the PCS system, there are no wires in the fruit zone, and the stakes are only half as thick as the line posts, so they wiggle better. The energy from the harvester is now being delivered very efficiently. "We found that if we did not go at a certain speed, the fruit would fly off the vines in front of the machine. Now we go twice as fast." Babcock is operating the harvester at 3.5 mph with a 325 rpm picking head oscillation com- pared to the former 1.75-2.0 mph with a pick- ing head oscillation of 375-400 rpm. The shaker rods last approximately three times longer at the slower rpm. Babcock mechanically harvests 10 acres of Chardonnay, 30 acres of Pinot Noir and 4 acres of Sauvignon Blanc with a 15-year-old Korvan pull-behind unit. For enological rea- sons, 4 acres of Pinot Gris and 2 acres of Chenin Blanc are hand-harvested. For the most part, mechanical harvesting has be- come a necessity due to costs and shortages of vineyard labor. "We have taken mechanical harvesting to a state of the art." Babcock notes. "This has be- come more important in the past several years as we have not been able to obtain labor to hand harvest. Everyone is either tied up at bigger ranches or they are working with other fresh fruit agriculture." In Babcock's mind, perhaps the most exciting aspect of the new system comes from realization that the canopy of a natu- rally growing vine provides a whole new set of opportunities for controlling sunlight penetration into the fruit zone. From this line of thinking, Babcock developed a new individual vine architecture approach in canopy management. "When you farm with VSP for 20 years, you start to forget what a naturally growing vine looks and feels like. Now that the vines are growing more three-dimensionally, I have noticed that most vines have some canopy out on their periphery in a space that is often between the fruit and the sun. What we do now is ask each vine, 'What are you giving me?'" For Babcock's leaf-removal crew, if a vine is offering canopy in this sweet spot, then it is taken into account during leaf removal in the fruit zone. If the desired amount of sunlight on the fruit is, for example, 50%, then the loca- "In the PCS system, there are no wires in the fruit zone, and the stakes are only half as thick as the line posts, so they wiggle better. The energy from the harvester is now being delivered very efficiently." —Bryan Babcock, Babcock Vineyards