Home | Services | Directions | Contact
Growing grapes in northern Nevada can be easy and extremely rewarding if you plant varieties that will withstand our relatively short growing season with its surprisingly late spring frosts, its early fall frosts, its high summer temperatures, and prolonged lack of rain. It's also important to prepare the ground with a full foot of good topsoil and to provide an adequate water source -- drip irrigation is the best bet, but regular hand watering will work as well. We carry several varieties that are excellent for our region. Come in and let us show you this year's selection.
A short list of varieties we carry:
Various Wine Graps:
Viticultural research conducted at the University of Nevada, Reno concludes that Reno (and Fallon) show great potential for growing wine grapes, especially with certain drought resistant varieties. Concerning production, the UNR study found that Chardonnay grapes had the highest yield due to less winter die-back, although Chardonnay vines were found to be susceptible to spring frost because they bud earlier than other varieties. Muscat Blanc and Muller Thurgau were the least productive.
UNR has its own experimental winery, a quarterly Viticultural Newsletter, seasonal wine tasting, all for exploring the commercial viabilities of growing wine grapes in Northern Nevada.
About the experimental winery from the UNR Web site:
In the summer of 2003, the University constructed a research winery at the Valley Road site. The purpose of the research winery will be to evaluate the varietal characteristics of the wines. The wines will be made with consistent minimalist techniques to reduce extraneous influences on grape flavor components in order to more accurately assess flavors from the grapes themselves. This means that wines will be fermented in stainless steel without oak, no secondary fermentations, with rapid filtration and bottling. Once the wines are made they will be chemically analyzed with standard and high-tech methods such as mass spectrometry. This should give us a very accurate profile of what flavors are produced in our grapes and how regulated-deficit irrigation influences them.
The easiest and most successful way to protect your grapes from neighborhood birds is to cover the vines in netting. Some gardeners use veil netting they purchase from fabric shops; others purchase black gardening netting. If possible, wrap the entire vine from top to bottom keeping the netting somewhat taut so that the birds can't get close enough to the grapes to peck through the netting.
Another trick is to place rubber snakes around the base of the plants and post a fake predator bird, such as an owl, close by. An outdoor house cat will also keep birds busy.
We've found that local native birds aren't the big culprits. Rather, it's the non-native species like Starlings that do the most damage.
A single grape vine, if pruned properly, can yeild enough table grapes to produce a winter's worth of grape jelly. Health conscious gardeners often shy away from making jellies and jams because of the extravagant amount of sugar demanded by the canning process. But now there are ways to make jellies and jams that don't take the traditional amounts of sugar to prepare. You can find special calcium fortified pectins that take much less sugar.
Amazon.com Widgets
