what's this?

There's a fly in my Chardonnay.... er, a random white grape in my Frontenac Gris.

This guy popped up in random spots along our rows of Gris, exactly 25 of them with massive clusters of white grapes blushing into rich golds in the sun. (F. Gris on right, mystery grape on left.) I've been eating them every chance I get as they have everything I like in a grape - slighly sweet with a little bite but not too sour or acidic. They are starting to show signs of bortrytis, but what isn't this time of year.

I thought perhaps we made a mistake and put some Traminettes or Vidals in there on planting day, but the foliage, stem color and new shoots look nothing like anything else in the vineyard.



The clusters are massive. The vines grow just right. All of them survived the harsh winter and late spring frost. They are easy to care for with trailing growth and very few side shoots on their fruiting wood. The weird part is that none of them have experienced the lightning winter dieback that's hit everywhere else in the vineyard, where a vine will be growing along just fine and then realize that the winter injured the truck and it no longer can support growth. It's hit everywhere else in the vineyard except for these guys. So, they are super winter hardy. Also, they aren't pushing out new blooms all the time either like the Frontenacs.




Nice golden color, excellent flavor... if you or anyone you know has any information about this grape, please let me know.

Marquette Harvest

Good Morning! Bright and early on a Friday morning, I get to the vineyard on a beautiful sunny day, totally ready to cut off the fruit that I've been worrying about for the past... 5 months? Geez. Marquettes, we've had some great times together, but it's time to go.

The first order of business is getting the netting off. It has been on the vines for a few months now and the Marquettes are so vigorous that there are new shoots coming out everywhere, tendrils pulling on the netting, leaves everywhere pushing through so wrestling the netting free of the vines was going to be a chore.



But thankfully John the handy mechanic (the guy drinking coffee) rigged up a netter-get-offer that hooked up to the tractor which worked incredibly well. Granted, we still had to use one guy on either side of the vines and one guy feeding the netting on the spool and picking leaves and branches out of the netting, but I can't even imagine how hard it would have been to do by hand without his contraption.



The grape clusters were small to medium and they were somewhat hidden in dense foliage. It would have been completely impossible to harvest had we not combed them twice and thinned off the side shoots and leaf pulled... and even after all that, it was still a treasure hunt.

I was trying to make a chart of the samples that I took of the Marquettes starting at the beginning of September, but all my numbers were pretty much the same - 3.15pH, TA around 10, and Brix around 23. Even my harvest numbers came out just like that pH 3.15; TA 10.3; Brix 23.5; so my line graph was pretty much flatline. We certainly let them hang on the vine a long time and the book I read said we should be fine as long as the pH didn't spike, which it never did. Towards the end, about in the final week of them hanging on the vine, they started getting attacked by everything. The birds took a lot off before we got the netting off, the frost wiped out a whole section of vines, and then in the end we had quite a few foes attacking the clusters.

We experienced a lot of rot when it got down to it and I'm glad we didn't wait another week. Next year, I'll mark the harvest for the middle of September when the numbers get around 3.15pH, 10 TA, and Brix of 23. The flavor didn't change much in the last few weeks, but then again possibly it would change the flavor of the wine.

Now I'm looking at the Frontenac numbers, which are the next batch to go and they look like they are moving in the right direction for harvest next weekend.


In the end, we got one ton off an acre of three year old grapes, which I guess isn't too bad and I hope I didn't push the vines so much that they won't come back next year. It's been such a weird season with a cool summer, almost a month of August drought, a late frost that wiped out half the buds, and ravenous birds that almost took a whole row out. I'm buttoning up my garden, just shaking my head at another weird Ohio growing season, thankful for what did grow and produce.

marquette harvest prep

It's the morning of the first round of grape harvests and I'm like a kid on the first day of school. I've been up since the early morning chorus of roosters at 5am. I fed everyone in the dark and all I got were confused, sleepy looks in return. I have my salami sandwich with a fresh tomato to soggy up the bread. I made a quart of blueberry and bancha tea. I'm trying to avoid the coffee, but probably going to loose that battle. I have on my lucky test taking las vegas tshirt from my college years and my favorite ram belt.

....and now I'm ready for a long day of slinging grapes. yehaw.

Apple Investigation

On the farm there is a very well stocked apple orchard full of antique and wild apples that were planted, grafted, and cared for 3 generations of Millers ago. I think that's right... LeAnne's great grandfather was the one that planted and cared for these trees and now here I am wandering through the gnarled old branches completely loaded with unknown apples and I'm taking on the task of trying to figure out what's what.
A lot of them are wild. Some of them are the most delicious apples I've ever eaten. Some I spit out and washed my mouth out. I guess my goal is putting at least a couple of names to the faces of the hundreds of trees.

Step one was marking them, which the friendly neighbor who's adept at carpentry did. Step two was picture taking and test testing... which is what this blog is all about. Well, I think I only got through half of them before I remembered that taste testers usually don't swallow what they're testing and with a belly completely full of apples I had to walk away before I ruined my love of apples. Step three will be testing their pH and sugars and whatever else you need to know about the apples that are going into the cider... which brings me to step four, making the cider and trying new blends. Oh experimentation. It brings out that scientific side of me that was extinguished with the rigors of documenting, test taking, and studying things that had no relevance to everyday life and I had no interest in learning in school. This is real and fun and delicious. It combines being outside with food, the art of pruning, the history of growing things, the physical nature of gathering, crushing, squeezing the juice, and the delicate mixture of flavors to make the perfect tasting apple cider.

...yes. I'm excited. Can't you tell?

Anyway, meet the trees. By posting on here I am hoping to find some antique apple enthusiasts who can give me some insight or point me in the right direction as to what the heck I have here. Oh, and also if anyone wants to swap cuttings of any of these, by all means let me know. I have another bunch of trees to take pictures so more to come....



Kinda sweet, not tart at all, kinda bland but an ok apple flavor






Very overripe, mealy. Possibly a transparent that went far past it's prime but is still holding on to the tree. Pretty gross right now though.


Underripe? Excellent apple flavor. Blushes with the sun?



Lots of drop. Decent flavor apple. Nothing out of the ordinary as far as taste, slightly bitter.



My what cute little apples. My how tart these cute little apples are. Possibly super underripe. Very small apples but they really have a lot of apple flavor.



Excellent yield. Mild sweetness with an excellent tart bite, very good apple flavor.



Excellent yield. Very similar to #6 as far as taste and coloration goes.



A lot had dropped. Interesting flavor. Red ones hit the ground. Some green small tart ones on the tree. Not sweet, more tart and apple flavor, but a little bitter.



#10 Decent production. *** Very sweet!!! *** Not tart at all. Excellent apple flavor. Big beautiful tree.



Possibly same as #10, sweet and very productive.




Lots of drop. Poor shaped tree and crowded from all sides. Very tart! Nice apple flavor but somewhat bitter aftertaste. Maybe underripe?



Two trees in one! Both very established, but the red is so bitter it hurts. Possibly very underripe. Very bitter, decent size and excellent production. The yellow one is similar to #12, very tart as well. Definitely a graft where both types are very productive on one tree.




Odd shape. Shaded. Low production, lots of drop, pretty tart.



Pretzel shaped tree. All apples dropped and covered in wasps. Looks like they dropped awhile ago.



Blushes in the sun. So tart!!!! Maybe underripe? Apples are still pretty small and hold on the tree very well.




Heavy producer. Tastes like an apple, but bland. Nothing really remarkable.



*18* Heavy producer. Beautiful apples. Amazing flavor. Not terribly sweet but great tart apple taste with little to no bitterness. Very juicy! Good enough for the table!


No apples.



Lots of drop. Very tart but very concentrated apple flavor.



Two types of apples on one tree. Yellow apples are small and very tart, butter and hard. The red apples are not too sweet or tart but has a lot of apple taste. Maybe overripe?




*** Delicious. Perfect blend of sweet and tart. Ready now. Amazing flavor. Lots of juice. Maybe the same as 25 - 28?



Small wild apples. Lots have dropped. The ones still on the tree are sour and bitter.



***Huge apples! Excellent for eating! Large and well balanced with nice juicy flavor, just the right amount of tart and sweet. Would put these on my table with pride. Really want to propagate this tree and find out what it is exactly.





There are a group of trees which I think are all the same. They don't look like much but the flavor of this apple is exquisite. Marty says they might be Rhode Island Greening. All trees are producing heavily, even the one that is almost parallel to the ground that when I first saw, I wondered why they heck they wouldn't cut it down. Now that it's producing these amazing apples, there's no way I would think of cutting it down either! Very sweet with just a little tartness and excellent apple flavor. We have plenty of them so I think this should be the staple behind our cider and I want to graft more of these and take some for my orchard at home. These trees are huge and still producing like crazy! Even the trees with bad form are still producing heavily.




After the Rhode Island Greenings, I didn't think that I could taste another apple, but this one isn't bad. Extremely sweet, but kinda bland. Probably the closest to a dessert apple yet though.




Dropped it's entire crop.




Overripe, mealy and unpalatable.



Decent production. Pretty sweet and nice apple flavor.



* Huge apples, shaded but still producing. Excellent for eating, but getting mealy. Very sweet.




Tart tart tart! but not bitter. Small apples






Dropped. Very low production for being in such a prime spot.



Ok, that's it for one day. If you or anyone you know has any information about these apples, please contact me. Oh, or if you just want to stop by to sample some apples, by all means, please do. I'm going to take a couple days off before I go back for seconds. Still plenty of apple trees left to try.