A winter vine can look like a stick that someone has forgotten to clear away. I like to begin there when explaining how grapes grow. The bare wood is alive, and its buds hold the beginnings of another season. Following that plant through the year turns an ordinary bunch of grapes into the last page of a much longer story.
A vineyard year
During winter dormancy, a vine survives using reserves stored in its permanent parts. Growers prune it, choosing which wood and buds will remain. When spring warmth arrives, buds swell and open, revealing small shoots and leaves. The new growth initially depends on energy saved from the previous season. This is why the year’s story does not really start on New Year’s Day. What the plant managed to store before winter helps determine what it can do when conditions improve. New Mexico State University’s guide to vine development.
Then come the flowers, much smaller and less showy than the flowers many children know from a garden. A successful flower can become a grape. Most commercial grape varieties can pollinate themselves, so a second variety is not generally needed just to provide pollen. Soon the little berries begin to enlarge. The green leaves make sugars using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide, helping support the plant’s growth. The bunch has a whole working canopy above it, catching light while the fruit develops below. The annual vine cycle, from eXtension.
As ripening begins, the berries soften and their colours change. Dark varieties become red, purple or nearly black; pale varieties change more subtly. Sugar accumulates and acidity generally falls. Growers call this stage véraison. The changes do not happen to every berry at precisely the same moment, which is why one bunch can briefly look like a collection of different fruits. Dates vary with the variety, place and weather. Spring arrives at a different time of year in the Southern Hemisphere, but the vine follows the same seasonal sequence. eXtension’s ripening account.
The next bunch is already becoming possible while this one grows. Cornell’s account of grape flowers explains that their development spans two seasons, beginning inside buds before the year in which they bloom. After harvest, leaves can continue making food while conditions allow, helping replenish the vine’s reserves. Eventually the leaves fall and the plant returns to dormancy. To me, that overlap is the best surprise in the vineyard: this year’s fruit and next year’s possibilities share the same living plant. Cornell on grape flowers; New Mexico State University.
At the fruit bowl
The tasting connection here is ordinary table grapes. With fruit prepared appropriately for each child’s age, a family can notice differences in sweetness, tartness, skin and juiciness. The grape did not receive its sweetness from the soil like a parcel through a letterbox. Leaves and sunlight helped make it possible. Even a small piece of fruit can prompt a good question about where the plant found the energy to grow.
