Based on the great results from last years test grafting of 224 vines from Pinot Gris to Pinot Noir Clone 459, I decided to graft everything over to have the whole vineyard only Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Only 3 vines from last year did not take, and 5 where grafted with the wrong budwood. In March, when we did the pruning of the newly grafted vines, I took a bunch of budwood from the 459 area and stored it at the cool storage at Lake Breeze. We re-grafted the 8 failed ones from last year and made an additional 3 rows (144 vines). There is now a total of 368 vines of clone 459.

This is from April 26, when the grafting was done. The bud break is starting on the re-grafted clone 459.

I also took cuttings from my existing Pinot Noir block and grafted them over on the Merlot vines that were next to the Pinot block. 100 vines where and there is now a total of 1,450 vines of the “Old Block”.

I also took cuttings from the Foxtrot vines and grafted 13 rows of Pinot Gris (624 vines) over to the “Foxtrot Clone 115”

In March, I went up to Kelowna and got cuttings from my friend Doug Reimer’s vineyard. He has a mix of clone 667, 777 and 115 brought in directly from France. The Merlot block at my vineyard was grafted over to this mix of his clones, a total of 527 vines.

The Southern Pinot Gris block was grafted to Chardonnay, 3 clones from Coolshanagh Vineyard, where Foxtrot made what I think the best Chardonnay they’ve made in 2011. We grafted 147 vines over to Clone 95, 334 vines to Clone 548 and 215 over to Clone 75. I also got some of the old Shot Wente Clone (Clone 72) and grafted 152 vines over to that.