Wines & Vines

76 WINES&VINES February 2018 GRAPEGROWING WINE EAST Brahm characterizes his soil as loamy with some clay, or "one of the poorer Honeoye soils." He considers Honeoye to be one of the better soils in the area, usually known as fertile, with slight acidity at the surface and neutral subsoil. He trains the vines to an umbrella or modified umbrella position and uses a three-wire sys- tem, bringing an average of three canes over the top and down to the second wire, with wire spacing of 12 to 16 inches. He tries to maintain relatively short canes, with internodes 5 to 6 inches apart. Average bud break is from late April to early May, which is later than Concord, Niagara and Maréchal Foch, about the same time as Valvin Muscat and a bit earlier than Riesling. Spray maintenance requires three or four applica- tions throughout the season, a number Brahm describes as average for his vineyards. "I don't think we've ever had any real disease problems with Traminette. That's another attractive qual- ity for this grape. Occasionally I've seen a bit of powdery mildew, but no black rot or downy mildew," he said. He remembers only one win- ter in the early 1990s when some of his newer vines were affected by crown gall as a result of unprotected graft unions. On average, Traminette in Brahm's vineyards is harvested by early to mid-October. He likes to pick at around 20°-22° Brix, when the TA is usually between 0.8 and 0.95, numbers he has found to be close to the mean. He recalled one particular aberration in 1996, when sugars only reached 17° Brix, combined with TA of 1.25. His records showed one other extreme, on the high end, with 24° Brix and TA of 0.71. The picking schedule is basically pre-determined, as Brahm and his brothers also run a juice business from the vineyards. He bases his schedule on more than 30 years of experience with the grapes but still pays attention to mitigating weather con- siderations for maturity. The grapes are machine harvested with a circa-1990 upright harvester with four-wheel drive, self-leveling and adjustable picking heights. He picks early in the day to keep the grapes cool and loads the fruit into 1-ton harvest bins. If the summer has been a bit cool and PAPER PULP AIDS PRESSING A rbor Hill has developed a technique that mixes paper pulp into the Traminette must before pressing. John Brahm adds ground paper pulp and pectic enzymes and then presses the mixture in a Willmes 3-ton pneumatic press, which Brahm likes for the high quality and lower solids juice it produces. He prefers paper pulp rather than rice hulls "for better straining of the juice with less solids." The pulp is from Rayonier Advanced Materials in Jesup, Ga., and is delivered in 500-pound bales that contain sheets of pulp about 0.0625-inch thick. He describes the pulp as "like a porous blotter paper." A high-speed mixer "rolls" the must, as he described it, and the sheets of pulp are added, breaking up when they hit the mixer turbine. The result is a homogenous, strained mass of grapes, juice, pulp and paper that is pumped into the press, where it is brought to 2 atmospheres of pressure, deflated and mixed, returned to 2 atmospheres, and deflated/mixed one last time before 4 atmospheres of pressure finish the process. "The yield is very much like vinifera—from 160 to 170 gallons per ton," Brahm said. After pressing, the juice is chilled to 38°-40° F to cold settle for up to 48 hours. Wines & Vines Digital Edition View this issue on your tablet, smartphone or online at winesandvines.com/digitaledition winesandvines.com

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