School may be out for summer, but our vines are hard at work. Spring brought us blooms, self-pollination, and tons of canopy growth. It seemed like the vines were growing those green shoots a foot at a time! 
Now, the vines have slowed down the green growth and are focusing on the fruit aka "fruit set". You can see tons of little green berries setting up. As we go into July and August, we're looking for "verasion" or the onset of ripening. Once the berries start to get a little color on them, we’ll go through and thin the herd taking out any clusters that are behind in maturity to help the vines focus even more attention on the best clusters.
We help the ripening process by tucking the shoots up into the trellis. This style is called VSP or Vertical Shoot Positioning. Tucking the shoots like this allows the sun and wind to flow through the canopy, ripen the berries evenly and put the fruit in prime uniform position for efficient harvesting.
Come by and take a walk through the vineyard! You can almost hear the vines hard at work!
Until next time - Cheers!
ZC Crew
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