Grow WINE GRAPES in COLD Climates! Good Varieties As Grown By THIS Northern Winery

Hey guys, I'm over here in northern Vermont visiting some really good friends in Isle La Motte over here at the Isle La Motte Winery. They do an exceptional job at their wines. This is just about 20 minutes or less from the Canadian border. It is zone 4, and just in case you'd be helpful to northern growers and northern gardeners like myself, I wanted to to help us understand that we can actually grow grapes that would be excellent for wine. So gone are the days where we say, hey, I live in too cold of a climate for wine grapes because the University of Minnesota and similar sources have been releasing these excellent grape varietals that have both European heritage, so European lineage such as Pinot Noir and Cabernet and all these types with American heritage to increase hardiness of the grape. So some examples would be Marquette, La Crescent, La Crosse, Frontenac. I also like Lionne Millot, which is actually more of a heritage grape hailing from, I believe, France, but you do have options. So even if you're in zone 4, even zone 3, you may be able to grow some excellent grapes for excellent wine. I just enjoy winemaking. We've been doing it at our garden, at our homestead now for a little while, and it's just so rewarding because you get this natural wine without all the preservatives, without all those additives. So if you are a northern grower and you're growing some of these grapes, there are a few little things that you can do. Definitely research the best way to prune, so the best viticare or pruning method for your grapes for your region. That'd be number one. And then also, if you are back east, like we are here in Vermont, where there's a lot of moisture or just a very humid and moist environment, feel free to do what they're doing here, which is to prune in such a way that your trellising starts very high. So over here we have a lot of space, and that really increases airflow. So this isn't your more typical Sonoma-Napa Valley way of doing it, which would be a lot more low to start. This is a lot more space so you can really get that that air passage through all the rows of grapes. Also, in pruning your grapes, if you are in an area prone to some late frosts in the spring, feel free to really take your time pruning. A lot of pruning happens in the winter, but in this case you might want to just wait until that possible last frost. There's no reason why you need to rush pruning. A lot of damage occurs later on in the branch than earlier on in the branching. So don't prune quite as heavy, and of course this depends on your method, but don't prune quite as heavy, and wait a little longer to prune your grapes in order to minimize frost damage. So we got to to sample some of the Isle La Motte winery wines, and they use the varietal called Marquette, which is a more recent release, which we also have growing in our Denver, Colorado little vineyard. And they really are exceptional wines. They taste great. They pull it off excellently. My favorite wine was the Ruin Marquette. It makes an excellent complex red wine, especially for one of these newer releases. I even heard that Marquette was one of these later varieties that have such a good and sweet and complex flavor that even Napa Valley was scouting it out. Marquette and Frontenac would be two very popular releases that are red wines. La Crescent and La Crosse are two examples of a good white wine grape that's very hardy. Many of these are hardy to zone either four, but some of these are actually hardy to zone three easily, which is really fantastic for a grape varietal that's going to give you a decent quality wine. So that's it guys. I hope you find this at all inspirational. Maybe you thought you couldn't, but now there's that hope that maybe you can. Those limitations are not on us any longer. There's some great releases out there. Let me know if you have any recommendations, any experience in growing cold hardy wine grapes. Hopefully I will continue to release good videos on how it's going in the high mountain region of Denver, Colorado. Feel free to comment below and until next time.