Thanks to everyone who came out to the webinar, and the many emails asking for a video to follow up on. Here it is!
You will find some context below, then a summary of highlights, and below that the transcript.
Thibaut Scholasch & Fruition Sciences
Thibaut Scholasch is the co-founder of Fruition Sciences, a plant physiology consultancy that uses high-level data and research to drive irrigation decisions in vineyards worldwide. Trained as a winemaker, Scholasch built Fruition’s methodology out of a conviction that wine quality is determined more by what happens in the vineyard than in the cellar. Their client list includes Château Lafleur in Pomerol, operations across Israel, South America, and California, and — closer to home — vineyards in the South Okanagan. Their peer-reviewed work on vine water status assessment (ex. Scholasch & Laurent 2023, IVES Technical Reviews) is among the most practically applicable research in the field. I used to reference it before ever meeting Thibaut.
The Discussion
We sat down with Thibaut to talk through the realities of irrigation management in the Osoyoos climate — a region he flagged as having evaporative demand comparable to Portugal and Israel, with less than 200–300 mm of rainfall over the growing season. The conversation covered Fruition’s framework for slicing the season into five physiological periods, each with distinct rules: where to push water deficit to drive tannin concentration (Period 3, berry set to véraison), and where to protect the vine from drought damage during ripening (Period 4). Michael Kullmann of Osoyoos LaRose joined to share their on-the-ground experience working with the system — including how they dropped potential alcohol from 16.5% to 14.5% in one vintage by tracking sugar loading and managing irrigation timing around heat waves. We also got into the mechanics of white vs. red irrigation strategy, canopy management as a lever for water demand, and why vine age fundamentally changes how fast you need to respond with irrigation.
Full webinar here. A follow-up session is planned for the coming months.
Webinar Highlights
Key topics and timestamps from the “Better Wine, Less Water” webinar with Thibaut Scholasch (Fruition Sciences) and Chris (Vintality), featuring grower commentary from Michael Kullmann (Su Rose Winery, Osoyoos).
00:00:00 Introduction — Chris (Vintality) opens
Chris introduces Thibaut Scholasch as co-founder of Fruition Sciences and the most influential researcher on vine irrigation he has encountered. He credits Thibaut’s accessible academic writing on irrigation and sensing technology as foundational to Vintality’s approach, and notes Fruition’s global client base spanning Israel, South America, California, and France.
00:01:45 Thibaut’s background — winemaker turned scientist
Thibaut explains that Fruition Sciences’ methodology grew out of his training as a winemaker and a desire to improve wine quality beyond what is achievable in the cellar. The core ambition: establish direct causation between how a fruit ripens in the vineyard and what ends up in the bottle.
00:02:38 Global client context and Château Lafleur case study
Fruition Sciences works primarily in arid regions (Douro Valley, Australia, Israel, Chile, California, Pomerol) but demonstrates that vine water-use monitoring applies even in non-irrigated areas, as it reveals vineyard fertility and quality-priming capacity. Château Lafleur (Pomerol) — which borders Pétrus — is highlighted as a client that stepped outside the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) regulatory framework to adopt data-driven irrigation in response to climate change, a collaboration Fruition has maintained for several years.
00:06:03 The four-step Fruition Sciences methodology
The operating framework is structured in four steps:
• Measure with purpose — collect data that directly informs a field action
• Analyse — contextualise plant data to understand why the same soil moisture produces different outcomes across sites or vintages
• Decide — account for current phenological stage and the memory of what the plant has experienced to date
• Capitalise — assess whether the impact of each practice landed where expected, building institutional knowledge vintage over vintage
The distinguishing principle: the plant is placed at the centre of all decisions rather than modelling environmental inputs. Because the vine is capable of self-training and physiological evolution, models built on weather, soil, rootstock, and variety will always lag behind what the plant is actually doing.
00:09:14 The five-period seasonal framework
The growing season is divided into five physiological periods, each governed by different ecophysiological priorities and requiring different management rules. The framework applies to both red and white varieties; the difference is in the intensity and timing of interventions within it.
• P1 — Winter rest to bud break: plant is highly sensitive to water and nitrogen deficiency
• P2 — Shoot and flower development: monitor leaf area growth rate as an early proxy for nitrogen or water deficit
• P3 — Fruit set to veraison (herbaceous growth): primary management window; sap flow is the key index; moderate water deficit trains plant drought resilience, determines total tannin and polyphenol content, and sets maximum berry size
• P4 — Maturation (veraison to hydraulic disconnection): shift to protection; sugar mass loading tracked to detect hydraulic disconnection and manage harvest timing risk
• P5 — Post hydraulic disconnection: irrigation via roots no longer reaches the berry; berry volume responds only to vapour pressure deficit (VPD) in the cluster microclimate
00:10:48 P3 as the critical quality window
Period 3 (fruit set to veraison) is identified as the single most important window for wine quality intervention. Three specific objectives are active simultaneously:
• Train the plant for drought and heat-wave resilience
• Activate secondary metabolism — the total polyphenol and tannin potential is fixed by the end of P3 and cannot be increased later
• Set the ceiling for maximum berry size (which determines the concentration potential heading into P4)
Water deficit during P3 also synchronises berry-to-berry ripening under a common “clock,” producing more uniform harvest decisions and easier tank management.
00:14:57 Sugar loading and hydraulic disconnection — three transitions
Thibaut describes three sequential hydraulic transitions as the berry matures:
• Transition 1 (end of herbaceous growth / lag phase): water flow to the berry shifts from root-driven to phloem-driven (leaf-sourced sugary water)
• Transition 2 (~21–22 Brix): phloem connection to the berry breaks; berry volume is now governed by atmospheric VPD only
• Transition 3 (full hydraulic disconnection): irrigation has no further effect on fruit; the risk of rapid yield loss (20–40% overnight) from dehydration becomes acute
Fruition Sciences uses sap flow sensors and sugar mass tracking (not sugar concentration/Brix alone) to detect the precise timing of these transitions. Knowing which transition the vineyard is in determines whether irrigation, misting, or canopy management is the appropriate response to an incoming heat wave.
00:16:18 Leaf area growth rate and canopy monitoring (P2)
Leaf area growth rate is expressed in degree-days rather than calendar days, removing heat-accumulation variability. The result reveals two distinct growth phases after bud break: a rapid early phase where interventions (nitrogen, water) have maximum leverage, and a slow late phase (mid-June onward) where the same intervention produces negligible return. Intervening early — while canopy growth velocity is high — is the principle underpinning the “super early” action requirement in fast-accumulating climates like Osoyoos.
00:21:04 Sap flow measurement — how it works
The sap flow sensor treats the vine’s vascular system as a series of articulated pipes. A small, precisely calibrated heat pulse is applied; the rate at which that heat transfers from point A to point B is converted into an actual volume measurement (litres per plant per day). This allows direct characterisation of vine water need satisfaction — and identification of the gap between atmospheric demand and what the plant is actually able to deliver — on a continuous basis throughout the season.
00:21:45 Pomerol drought case study — vine water need collapse
A Pomerol site (not Château Lafleur) illustrates extreme water stress: starting in June at 100% vine water need satisfaction, the plant declined progressively through July due to the mismatch between atmospheric demand and rainfall supply. By late August, even after rain, the plant could only recover to ~40% of its original satisfaction level — a 60% permanent loss of functionality triggered by hydraulic cavitation. The consequence: not only is that season’s yield and fruit quality compromised, but carbohydrate reserves for the following year are depleted, bud fertility declines, and vineyard productivity spirals downward. Château Lafleur’s data, shown alongside, demonstrates how 1–3 targeted irrigations maintain minimum satisfaction without over-watering — preserving plant function and next-season productivity.
00:24:59 Chile case study — water savings and harvest timing
A Chilean block was split into two management zones: conventional irrigation vs. the Fruition Sciences demand-driven protocol. Key findings:
• The plant-signal-guided zone used ~10–15 litres less per plant per measurement period, despite receiving far less total water
• The excess water applied in the conventional zone was largely vaporised immediately into the atmosphere — providing no net benefit to the plant
• The conventional zone was harvested 20 days later due to excess vegetative vigour delaying veraison and hydraulic disconnection
• The demand-driven zone achieved earlier veraison, earlier disconnection, and earlier harvest — reducing dehydration risk and, counterintuitively, producing higher yield because the fruit was picked before heat-driven shrivel
00:28:10 Osoyoos climate data — why it resembles Israel and Portugal
Thibaut presents climatic indices for the Osoyoos area drawing on data collected with Michael Kullmann at Su Rose:
• Evaporative demand (ETo) reaches 7–8.5 litres/m² in July–August — comparable to Portugal and Israel, not to Bordeaux
• Growing degree day accumulation is highly variable year-to-year (820–2,000 GDD by mid-October over the last two seasons), with a steep accumulation slope from a slow spring start — analogous to Paso Robles or Israel in heat-load terms
• Rainfall on the monitored sites has been below 200 mm in two recent years and barely 300 mm in the other two — making irrigation a structural necessity, with timing and distribution as the only variables in question
• VPD regularly reaches 5+ in season, with peaks above 6.5 in 2024 — on those days, vine water use can double or triple, consuming in a single day what was expected to last three
00:32:46 Michael Kullmann (Su Rose, Osoyoos) — grower testimony
Michael describes working with Fruition Sciences over the past 2–3 years. Vintages 2023 and 2024 were largely lost to frost; 2025 was the first year with a full crop and commercial wine production. Key outcomes from the 2025 season:
• Harvest was successfully managed around an early September heat wave by tracking vine hydraulic status in real time
• Potential alcohol dropped from a historical norm of 16–16.5% (requiring expensive must correction) to 14.5% — within target — by irrigating at the right moments and picking before the heat wave rather than reacting to it
• The shift from pressure bomb spot-checks to continuous tracking via V360 software gave the team confidence to act decisively under time pressure
00:36:19 V360 software — vintage comparison via degree days
Michael highlights the V360 platform’s use of growing degree days as the primary temporal axis rather than the Julian calendar. Given that bud burst at Su Rose can shift by 2–3 weeks year-to-year (early May in 2022, April 15–20 in 2025), calendar-based vintage comparisons are meaningless. GDD-normalised tracking allows direct overlay of any two vintages on a phenological timeline, making anomaly detection and irrigation scheduling both intuitive and precise. The software ingests data from on-site weather stations automatically; shoot elongation, apex scores, and sugar loading data can be uploaded manually or submitted to the Fruition team for entry.
00:40:58 Manual data collection protocol (pre-sap flow)
For sites without sap flow sensors, the manual protocol used at Su Rose consists of:
• Shoot elongation: flagged reference vines and shoots measured weekly from bud break; takes 20–30 minutes per block, becomes faster with repetition
• Apex scoring: field team uses a mobile app; completed quickly per block
• Sugar loading / maturity sampling: begins earlier in the season than conventional maturity checks; interns execute the sampling
Data is uploaded to V360 or submitted to Fruition Sciences directly. Irrigation event data, previously uploaded as CSV files, will be automated via integration with the Lumo irrigation management system going forward.
00:42:55 Fruition Sciences irrigation recommendation cadence
Fruition Sciences sends weekly email recommendations specifying, block by block, whether to irrigate or hold based on current plant status and the upcoming weather forecast. Check-in meetings occur at the start and end of each phenological period (approximately every 6–8 weeks). Michael notes that the most counterintuitive shift was irrigating more heavily early in the season and stopping earlier in summer — with dry gaps in July–August extending to “several weeks.” Trust in the recommendations built quickly; within one season the whole vineyard was brought under the protocol.
00:38:26 Long-term vineyard planning — rootstocks, trellising, pruning
Beyond seasonal irrigation, Michael describes replanting decisions made in collaboration with Thibaut targeting the climate of 2050, not the 1990s conditions under which Su Rose was originally established. Changes include pruning technique, trellis configuration, and rootstock selection. The explicit framing: replant for the next 30 years of climate, not for the practices that were current when the vineyard was first planted.
00:47:47 Q&A — Irrigation strategy for white wines
For white varieties the goal is to extend P2 duration and avoid significant stomatal closure during the phase where stomata no longer actively regulate aperture. The strategy remains one of training plants for drought resilience through spaced irrigation events, but the tolerated water deficit threshold is substantially less limiting than for reds destined for long-term aging. Nitrogen management for aromatic expression is noted as a related topic not covered in this session.
00:49:22 Q&A — Canopy management and irrigation interaction (Shay’s question)
Canopy interventions (hedging height, leaf removal, lateral management) directly determine the maximum hydraulic conductivity of the vine — the total water volume the plant needs to move to stay functional. Reducing canopy size reduces water demand, which in turn allows longer intervals between irrigation events. The microclimate trade-off: maintaining laterals around clusters during P4 and P5 provides a protective microclimate that reduces VPD exposure of the fruit, but adds some water use. Thibaut’s position: during P5, irrigation reaches the canopy but not the fruit; therefore a cluster-protective microclimate provided by laterals is preferable to trying to compensate with irrigation. The principle summarised: reduce leaf area size to reduce “water addiction” and maintain winemaking objectives. The optimal canopy geometry balancing these factors is an active area of Fruition Sciences research.
00:54:51 Q&A — Sparkling wine irrigation (Lindsay’s question)
Sparkling wine fruit is typically harvested while still hydraulically connected (within P3 or early P4 sugar loading). Excessive irrigation during P3 carries two risks: (1) dilution of aromas — though this may align with lower-Brix production objectives; and (2) delayed onset of sugar loading, increasing berry-to-berry heterogeneity and complicating the third-week-of-August harvest decision. If the vineyard has already entered P4, the phloem pathway to the berry is still active but the xylem is not — meaning misting (evaporative cooling of the cluster microclimate directly) is more effective than root-zone irrigation for managing heat stress at that stage.
00:57:03 Q&A — Apex monitoring as a proxy tool
Apex activity indicates whether the vine is prioritising vegetative growth (roots, trunk, leaves) over reproductive investment (fruit ripening and secondary metabolite accumulation). While apexes remain active, the plant is managing carbohydrate reserves as a priority over ripening its offspring. The decline in apex activity signals the physiological switch toward secondary metabolite production — the compounds that serve both seed dispersal (colour, sugar, aroma for birds) and winemaker quality goals. This shift is used to schedule subsequent irrigation events and to confirm that the vine has committed to maturation. Apex scoring via mobile app is the accessible, non-sensor proxy for this transition at sites without sap flow instrumentation.
00:59:32 Q&A — Vine age and irrigation frequency
Older vines buffer the rate of collapse in vine water need satisfaction. Where a young vine’s water use might drop sharply from 5L to 3L to 1L relative to atmospheric demand over consecutive days of deficit, an older vine declines more gradually (e.g., 3.5L → 3.4L → 3.3L). This buffering directly translates to a lower required irrigation frequency for older vines relative to younger ones in the same climatic conditions.
01:00:37 Closing and next steps
A follow-up webinar is planned for 1–2 months out, expanding on topics including canopy management, heat wave response protocols, cover crops, and nitrogen management. Thibaut will be visiting Okanagan clients in July. Attendees are encouraged to review Fruition Sciences’ published research and online resources. Marcus Keller’s work is noted as a complementary framework with significant overlap and some meaningful differences in irrigation timing and strategy philosophy.
Transcript
Note: Transcript generated from auto-generated captions (ASR).
I’m going to start us off right now. everyone here probably knows me, but I’m Chris Vintality just in case there’s someone that doesn’t. We are a precision ag company here. and so I’m really excited to present Thibaut Scholasch. he I first heard of him just through some of his research. So actually one of the things I’ve really admired about Thibaut is his academic writing is very accessible. So, he actually had a couple papers on irrigation and irrigation sensing technology that I stumbled on and it was incredibly practical and accessible and I was like, “Oh, this is really cool. Like, I can actually go use this in the field.” And kind of kicked off some of our work.
and then through some conversations and actually then attending a webinar that they put that Thibaut put on a few years ago now was like, “Oh, this totally makes sense. This fits both what we’re seeing in the research. This fits what we’re experiencing in the field.” and that’s kind of where we got in touch and then kind of started building a relationship from there. So, I’ll just kind of end there and I’ll just say Thibaut’s probably for me he’s the most influential researcher on irrigation. He does a lot more than irrigation. A lot of his early work actually on color quality parameters in grapes is also really cool. I think he he has a very wide knowledge base.
But for me, he’s really informs a lot of how we think about irrigation and we’ve really enjoyed working with him and his team at Fruition Sciences. So, he’s a co-founder of Fruition Sciences. and they have clients all over the world. I’ve asked him to mention some of his clients for context, but, they work everywhere. They work in Israel. They work in South America, California, obviously, France, all over. So, anything Thibaut I did not say. and again, I am underelling his resume. I will say as well, he has a very, very impressive resume, but anything I did not mention, I should have Thibaut because otherwise I’m handing it off to you. Okay.
Thank you Christopher for this very nice introduction. yes my name is Tibbo and just one thing I’d like to say that I am trained as a wine maker. So all of those development stemmed from initially my desire to improve wine quality and understanding what could be done beyond what’s done in the cellar. So that’s just for the for the history and I have a little presentation around 20 slides because I wanted to have ample time to have a more informal conversation. So I’m sharing my screen. Let me know if that’s going well. Thank you. And let’s dive into what I have prepared. So Chris asked me to drop a few names.
so I did. It is true that we work historically in arid regions from Australia to Duro Valley in Portugal. But what we’ve understood is that the knowledge of V motor use variations is also applicable to areas where there is less or even when there is no need to irrigate because it captures many more things about the fertility of your vineyard and also how you are priming your vineyards to either make top stellar wine quality or more generic standard wines. All of that is somehow captured in the physiological performances of the plant. So maybe what brought us to the news recently is the coverage made by Château Lafleur in Pomeroll. It’s a vineyard that is fairly known because it touches literally Petrus and they have preferred stepping outside the rigid regulatory framework of Appalachian regime to adapt their technical interventions in face of the climate change and the data that led them to take this major turn is the one that I’m going to discuss because we’ve been collaborating with them for for many years.
So to really hammer this I have transcribed their testimonials. So you see that we are actually diving in areas where irrigation is not yet the main practice. We are also working in Israel and the reason why I’m bringing it is because by the end of my presentation I will show you some climatic indices that justifies why there is a lot to be learned in terms of the climate demand and the water supply that you guys have been experiencing over the last years that makes your growing conditions very similar to Israel. So the fact that we can claim that we’ve been successfully developing and implementing our approach here might be for you and also another one where we do not work necessarily with irrigation with the group in in province.
Okay. So after having dropped those names let’s take one step back and be a bit more theoretical and I was going to say philosophical about what it is we are trying to do. Technically we are collecting data like many other people everyone collects data nowadays but we try to be sober in our data collection and to have a purpose. So collecting data in order to make a legit an action that’s going to be taken in the field right afterwards. And philosophically since we say the wine is made in the vineyard we are trying to put that saying into practice by really going into the vineyards and and see what can be the direct causation between a fruit that is ripe the proper way and the wine bottle.
So our method is essentially unfolded into four steps. The first step is measuring measuring with a purpose like I was saying. The second step is really important. It’s analysis. analysis is really important because it it tells why for say a same level of water in the soil we understand why the plant does not have the same level of comfort. So without analysis, without our capacity to put in a context a plant data is very hard to understand why similar conditions do not lead to the same outcomes. The measurement part of course I said it’s it’s very critical because that’s how we objectively remember why 23 is different and how it’s different from 26.
But once we have coupled this first step measurement with analysis then comes the decision part and the decision is essentially what practice considering what we’ve seen make sense to be implemented now meaning taking into consideration the plant development stage we are at. So we need also to understand that there is a memory effect and everything the plant has been experienced up to the day of the decision is also going to condition whatever decision we are going to recommend. And the last part the person touching his chin here is there to symbolize that a very important phenomenon is related to our capacity to capitalize on our experience draw conclusions and really assess whether the impact of our practices is where we expected it to be.
So this is how really we try to help the process of decision- making in the vineyard with objective with an objective approach and something that’s very original in our approach is that we mainly use plant data and that is for two reasons. The first reason is that the plant is an extremely complex system and trying to measure all the production factors that affects the plant and that are captured in a very complex web of interaction with one another is is really complex. But even if we were able to create a model that predicts based on the weather, based on the soil, based on the roottock, based on the varietal, how the plant will behave, still we will be probably deceived because the plant is capable of self-training.
So by the time we figure out how the plant responds, it has probably evolved onto a different type of of behavior. So our approach is that we prefer to follow the plant without trying to guess how it fusion so many different factors and base our response considering how the plant has behaved. So really putting the plant at the center of any decision is our trademark I would say. And so how do we put that into practice? So here I’m going to spend a bit a little time but I think it’s really the core of our approach and bear in mind that what I’m going to say is for red variatals mainly driven for a high quality target but a similar slicing of the season would occur if we were to grow a wide varietal.
we will simply put an intensity and a severity of our practices at a different moment. So this framework is valid for different wine profile. It’s just that we change our operation within that framework. And so how do we see the season? We slice the season into five period because during a season the vine goes through different physiological stages and therefore the echof echohysiological parameters at stake are going to be different. Typically once but break has occurred the plant is very sensitive to water and nitrogen deficiency less so during the next period the period we called herbaceous growth. During that period actually the period three that starts at fruit set and that lasts until veraison the photosynthetic activity is not too impacted by moderate water deficit.
The peak of nutrient assimilation is passed. So we can play with water deficit. So this is our window to prime the fruit. We have three objectives during that period three. Train the plants to be stronger. So less susceptible to drought and less susceptible to heat waves. Second objectives determine berry composition by activating secondary metabolism. By the end of that period the total amount of tannins the total amount of polyphenol is set. There is nothing you can do later on. It’s just a matter of realizing or not realizing the potential that you have acred during that period three. And the last important point during that period three is that we determine the maximum berry size that will be potentially reached at the end of period 4.
So a lot is going on. P3 that period three that period of aqueous growth is your window of opportunity to optimize water deficit and its effect on fruit. Therefore its effect on wine quality. Period four is the period of maturation. During that period most of the water comes from the leaves no not so much from the roots. So we are at that stage in a logic of protection against water deficit. Even if water deficit tolerance is a bit sturdier at that time we we can afford to trigger irrigation at lower threshold. We are really trying to avoid the drawback that drought and heat wave combined can can have on fruit integrity.
And the period five here we know that during that phase whatever we do at the root system has no impact on the berries because the berry at that stage has become gradually disconnected from the plant and only response to the environment namely the vapor pressure deficit which is essentially how dry and hot is the atmosphere around the berry. So the microclimate. So it does not pay to irrigate during that phase if you are trying to fight. you are slowly going to affect the canopy. So in conclusions what I want to take home from from this slide is that different rules exist for best practices and that is because plant physiology is different during each period.
And so you will see how we have built a decision system based on plant indexes that are proxies to describe how each period is affecting the outcome of the next. So typically during the period of shoot and flower development we are going to monitor the rate of leaf area to identify either nitrogen or water deficit early. Why do we do that? We we don’t measure the canes for the canes but because for their roles as proxies to alert us if we have early suspicion of water or nitrogen deficit. Then during the herbaceous growth we are really focusing on sap flow. That is to say how much water the plant is conveying from the ground up and to the atmosphere.
And so at that stage we have ruled out the risks of nutritional deficits and water deficits during that period here in yellow is the main production factor to manage. So that’s remember that the perfect moment of the season to play with water deficit because it pays off at the end in terms of more uniform harvest and maybe more concentrated fruit and maybe more polished tannins. all of the complexation between autotoscanins and tanin will be a a reflection of what’s going to happen during that yellow stage. So in conclusion that P3 is your window of opportunity to optimize water deficit and its impact on the final fruit composition. So again we don’t measure the water flow the sap flow for the sake of it but for its role as a proxy to prime the wine profile.
Then during the maturation phase we are going to look at a fruit that is connected via the phloem to the plant. So during that phase we look at the sugar loading that is to say the sugar mass not the sugar concentration but the gain in sugar mass per berry and we want to detect the precise moment of hydraulic disconnection to then anticipate the impact of decision as harvest approaches in terms of risk versus rewards knowing that there is nothing that the plant can do to help the fruit keeping from dehydration if we have a heat wave. So having acquired this ability to discriminate between plants still hydraulically connected we are in period 4 plants no longer hydraulically connected we are in P5 helps you assessing the risk of yield loss versus the reward if you decide to extend your hank time.
So again we don’t measure sugar for sugar but for its role as a proxy to separate those periods confirm that we have reached the potential of polyphenol maturation and additionally additionally it gives us early insight into the pool of acids which will also impact the coloration. So now I’m we’ll just spend a few minutes showing to you the principles. So when we are measuring the leaf area growth dynamics, we are actually getting rid of three things are actually driving leaf area dynamics. The the heat, the water and the nitrogen. So we are removing uncertainties coming from leaf development speed due to a lack of heat by expressing the speed per growing degree days and days in days out years in years out we see that there are two phases in that speed of fruit elongation.
A first phase right after but break where that speed is high and a second phase during which that speed is low. And so expressing in relation to degree days the canopy growth rate is a way for us to really pinpoint at whether water deficit or nitrogen deficit is the culprit that we need to correct. And you see that the reward the the benefit you get from intervening when you are driving at high speed is much better because you will have a much greater impact as opposed to try to gain some additional leaf area development by mid June or end of June when every processes is happening at a very slow slow rate. If now we look at the next period the the yellow period the one I was telling you is actually priming the fruit quality potential.
If we are coming into that early vis without having experienced water deficit you will see that the berry coloration window will extend over a longer period of time. Therefore, you are going to ripen a fruit where berry to berry heterogenity is more pronounced as opposed to having induced some moderate water deficits during that period of herbaceous growth. The the reward from that is that you’re going to have a greater synchronization of all your berry ticking under the same clock and therefore getting red at the same time which translates in wine maker terms a more uniformly a more uniform harvest. So the decision of harvesting is easier to make. The fruit composition in the tank is easier to manage simply because you have put on realign the time clock at which each berry is ticking thanks to these water deficits that you have carefully induced during period three.
Maybe the most important slide here you see the sugar mass inside the berry or the volume of the berry. Sorry, I should have said the volume of the berry as time goes by period by period. And so you see that during the herbaceous growth, most of the flow of water helping the mass of the berry to increase its volume is coming from the roots. Therefore, water deficit experienced by the plant is directly impacting food composition. But that only gets you up to the L phase. the when the berry is still green, then you have that second phase, the maturation phase during which whatever water goes into the fruit is a very sugary water.
It’s flowing. And so it’s a water flow that does not originate necessarily from the roots. It originates to put it simply from from the leaves. So that’s the first bracket, the first hydraulic transition we have. But that’s not it. Then we reach 21 22 Brix maybe and the final hydraulic disconnection happens when even the phloem breaks from its relationship with with the berries and then fluctuations in berry volume are under the regulation of how dry is the atmosphere. So the third hydraulic transition is the one we are actually trying to pinpoint with our data collection program in order to not be surprised if from one day to the next we are going to lose 20 30 40% of our production even if we had irrigated two days ago.
It’s because the plant and the fruit had been hydraulically disconnected. So key moment exists for irrigations and we need to decide of the legitimacy of those moments according to how hydraulically the fruit is related to the plant. So how do we do that? We do that by associating the plants to a bunch of pipe articulated with one another within which water is circulating and we apply a tiny amount of heat and we look at how much the water flow is transferring heat from point A on your left to point B on your right and that’s how we can convert from a heat measurement a measurement an actual measurement expressed in liter per plant and that’s how we are measuring the actual water consumption to characterize how a sol unit of a specific season is driving the peak of water consumption and the lows of water consumption.
And so that’s exactly what I want to share with you here. You see a not so lucky site in Pomeroll this year and you see that we started off the season in June with a level of vine water need satisfaction matching 100% of what the plant needs and you see that due to the lack to the mismatch between water demand which is the light the temperature the wind and water supply which is the rain. the plant is not able to maintain its satisfaction at 100%. So as a result from one day to the next it provides less and less water. It is more and more frustrated in terms of satisfying its water needs.
And what’s very and here you see we are really scratching the bottom of the root reservoir. The plant is wilting and it is actually cavitating meaning that its hydraulic integrity its ability to keep functioning is now jeopardized so much that when we get those late August rain the plant can merily go back to satisfy 40% of its initial needs that were 100. So here we’ve lost 60% of plant functionalities and that started from July 15. So if you have a plant cycle that lasts from May to end of September, you have truncated twothird of it and that’s two3 is twothird of the plant season where you do not store carbohydrates, where you do not induce nice bud fertility for the next season.
So, not only are you not going to get your yield, you’re not going to ripen your fruit that season, but more importantly, next year you don’t have the carbohydrate reserves to have a nice shoot elongation after bud break and your bud fertility declines. So, your vineyard fertility declines. So, this is a very alarming stage and you see that’s done in an area where irrigation has not yet been authorized. But that’s because I think they have not understood what’s really going on inside inside the plant. But for people who have you see that so that’s typically lafler we have here a good reason to compensate the mismatch between water supply and water demand by carefully having one two and three irrigations.
And you see those irrigations are not leading to a massive blow into the water need satisfaction. They just keep up with a minimum level of V water need satisfaction in order to preserve the yield in order to preserve water plant functions. So that next season in 26 we don’t see the yield dropping 40% simply because the plant could not even synthesize its fruitful buds. So that that’s that’s what we are doing is not only preparing the plant to make the best possible wine, it’s also preserving plant functionality so that the vineyard keeps being profitable. I wanted also to bring another example from Chile where the climatic demand reaches a similar demand to use and you see here we have an operations where we have sliced a block into two parts.
the dark blue part where it’s irrigation as usual and this part here with the zero where we did our irrigation program saying that we were going to rigate only when the plant claims it needs it. And you see here the water savings were enormous because at no point in time the plant showed signs that there was a down regulation of its water use. It was using less water. So here you can see actually how much water the plant was using. it was using 120 liters instead of 130. But you see that the 10 liters difference 10 liters difference per plant is actually probably induced by the excess water that has been brought up by unnecessary irrigations.
The same goes on here 128 versus 145 but here we had put 75 liters and the same goes on here 125 instead of 150 but we had put 50 liters. So you see that in a nutshell all the irrigations that you had put into the vineyards got immediately vaporized into the atmosphere. So it’s water for nothing. But there is a vicious side effect behind here is that having maintained the plant in an overly abundant amount of water supply kept it in a more vegetative state. Which meant that the dark blue got harvested 20 days after the pale blue where by carefully managing water deficit we actually hasten the onset of Veraison which helped us hastening the end of the hydraulic disconnection and we harvested maybe 10 days into that phase where the fruit was hanging free without being hydraulically connected.
And that was still 20 days earlier than the other side of the ranch. But within that 20 days, we lost yield. We we lost here not so much. We lost only one tons. But that explains to you these surprising results. Dry farming in that example led to higher yield because we could harvest earlier and therefore get the fruit before it got dehydrated because it ripen faster. And the last example here in Sonoma in California this year where you see sometimes there is no way if you do not irrigate you scratch the bottom of the root reservoir very quickly. So here by carefully distributing four irrigations we were able to keep that vineyard in the in the concrete and making sure that we have done so in a way that kept the vine integrities and so we are fairly confident that it should produce again this year in a similar fashion.
So that’s what I wanted to share before transitioning with some data coming from Oso use that Michael had helped us collecting and that will be a nice segue into getting Michael in a conversation with me. So I just wanted to share three four things that really caught my my attentions when we started collaborating. This is the evaporative demand expressed in liters per square meter. you guys crypt in July and August in the vicinity of 7 8 and a half. That’s very similar to what we get in Portugal or Israel. So you have climatic profile that bears more similarities with arid climates than Bordeaux or all the more oceanic faces.
So that’s already for inspirations. But more importantly your growing degree days profile. So here we are looking at the thermal time accumulation. It’s really sets the speed at which the clock is ticking for the plant. The greater that number, the faster goes the season. You are reaching by middle of October values over the last two years spread between 820 up to almost 2,000. So already there is a huge variability years to years. But more importantly, those values at the end of the seasons are high. To give you some perspective, in Pomero, which is hot for Bordeaux, we are at 1500s. In Logado, we are at 1,800. But more importantly, you have a very slow start.
You are barely reaching 200 by May, but still you end up finishing like Paso Robles or Israel. So that mean that the slope at which you are accumulating temperature is very steep. So that mean it’s like driving a Ferrari where every turn has to be done at 200 kilometers per hours as opposed to regions where the heat accumulation pattern is much slower. So a much a less steep slope. So that’s for me drives the call for the fundamental importance of intervening in the vineyard super early because everything happens at a very fast rate and with large amount. So then here I have tried to characterize how the dryness of the air is a risk to keep your fruit tidity.
Beta pressure deficit is the measurement we use to characterize the pressure that is exerted on on the berries to extract water away from it. And typically values below four are not a concern. But you spend in 25 so many days in the ranges of the fives. And here in gray you see in 24 you had those peaks above six and a half. So that means that on those days in the level of vine water use can be doubled sometimes threefold. So in one day you lose what you had put in your vineyard thinking it was going to last for three days. But also if here you are at a point where the fruit and the plant are hydraulically disconnected, you know that this peak is going to be having a very bad impact on your alcohol level, your acid degradation and your volume.
Whereas if you are still hydraulically connected, chances are that you may smooth and buffer the detrimental effect of that peak. So you see why in introduction I was showing Israel as a reference because in terms of climatic demand you are a comparable situations but in terms of water supply as well I was very surprised to see how little rain you get since on those sites we have two years here in 2122 where we were at less than 200 and the last two years we barely reached 300. So no questions that there is a mismatch between climatic and the demand and in your case irrigation is not a question. It’s a matter of timing distribution.
So with that I’d like to let invite Michael to have a conversation so we can actually see how possible and realistic it is to decifer the vineyard the vintage according to this method. Yeah I mean well thanks thanks. Hi everybody. yeah I mean for us we’ve been working with fruition going back two three years. So obviously the vintages 23 and 24 were kind of wipeouts. We weren’t able to install the sat flow sensors for those vintages because of obviously the frost. But in 2025 which was the first vintage where we pulled respectful crop and we actually made wine from the vineyard. we saw a a massive help working with Thibaut and the team.
as Thibaut mentioned, in 2025, there was that that heat wave, which was the first real big heat wave we got in 25 at the beginning of September. and as we’ve been tracking as we’ve been tracking the whole vine from and following and speaking with Thibaut and the team, we knew that that was going to have a massive impact on on all our wines. And we basically managed our harvest around that heat wave. the other thing with working with with fruition has been really to understand better the problems we have. You know we always knew that irrigation was really really important for us and at something we spent a huge amount of time working on it and really working with human really opened our eyes that wow maybe we’re doing this wrong.
Maybe we need to take a step back and do things differently. You know, historically, we’ve been really working with sending poor interns out at either very very early in the morning or at 1:00 in the afternoon to go to pressure bombs and then have huge amounts of data and being like, “Right, is are we is this is this right?” And and you know, working with working with the team at Fuition is has yeah, opened our eyes to doing things differently. and it’s also shown us that yeah, we we grow grapes in an extreme environment. it’s hot, we need to irrigate, but we also need to irrigate at the right moments. And so, you know, the September breaking out the different periods really, really helps us.
It becomes really easy for us on site to manage the different sites really well. and also what was great is working with Thibaut and saying, look, these are the problems we want to these are the problems we have and this is what how we want to affect it. This is this is how we this is what we want to work with. And one of them for us was really high alcohol levels. And so historically at Osoyoos LaRose, you know, we could be bringing things in some Merlos at 16 16 and a half degrees of potential alcohol, having to wash them down, RORO them, spend a lot of money, not great for the wine quality.
and 2025 because we’d been tracking the grapes and because we’ve been working fruition, you know, we finished ferments, we were at 14 and a half potential alcohol, bang on, really where we wanted to because we’ve been tracking it because we’ve been using the V360 software, we’re able to basically irrigate at the right moments and know, look, we have this heat wave, we have a week to 10 days to harvest. This is it. We can’t wait. and and I and I see that as has really helped us. and I’m really looking forward to we’re finally because Touchwood’s no frost this year, we’re finally able to put the SAF flow sensors in. I’m really really looking forward to seeing what what that does for us.
and you know, working with with them as an absolute fountain of knowledge and every year, every time I have a meeting with them, I I learn I learn new things. I can’t Yeah, I can’t recommend them highly enough. That’s that’s that’s what that’s what that’s our that’s Yeah, that’s what we’ve made of it here. And and it’s been great working with them and their Vitty 360 software is great. You know, I’ve always been a bit hesitant. I hate traceability software because I feel like you spend your life on the computer looking at the traceability software, but the way they break it down and the way that you track everything through going degree days means you can compare vintages very easily and it makes you know as you’ve got massive vintage variability here as TB touched upon the fact that we get such cold winters means that you know bud bursts can move anywhere two to three weeks and so you know if you look at 2022 our bud burst for us was sort of first week of May whereas you know last year in 2025 our bud was 15th to 20th of April.
So there you’ve got that two to three week window and so you throw the Julian calendar out the window and you just track it with their growing degree days and then having everything on B360 and measuring everything through grain degree days. You know these days I I set up meetings with Chris and Tuber and I say we’ll meet at sort of 350 grain degree days. but it’s it’s good. It’s, you know, it’s it’s really really opened eyes. and I I I can’t recommend them highly enough. yeah, it’s really transformed us. And in terms of of yields, you know, obviously we’ve only really got one vintage where we’ve got the actual, you know, a good vintage.
but, you know, we’re really happy with what we have in 2025 where we followed the irrigation recommendations and and everything went through them. And this is even before us using the sap flow sensors. You know, this is it’s allowing us maybe even just go back to the basics of understanding better what the vine is doing by measuring measuring the things the shoot elongation sugar loading the apexes just going back to basics and and focus on what really is important has been great. Yeah. Chris, do you have anything you want to want to mention I’m forgetting? Yeah. No, I think that I think that’s awesome. And one thing I wanted you both to talk about was a bit also, you know, Michael on your site, especially thinking about different varietals and then maybe even areas where you’re thinking about different style.
So, so kind of the approach changing, not just being general. Yeah, for us it’s it’s cabinet like obviously we we make wine from one big site. It’s 100 acre bench in very hot as as you can see. and for us, we’ve had some real issues in getting the cab to the ripess levels that we want and and working with, you know, occasionally getting shribbleing cabs and not getting the ripess that we want and maybe getting high alcohol, but just disjointed disjointness ripeness levels. And so really having a different approach to each variety and each block is has been great. You know, we we don’t treat the whole vineyard as one. we break them up into different zones and treat them differently.
and I think we’ll really I’m hoping and I think we will we’ll really get to that next level this year when we finally get to install those those SA flows. I think we’ll really really better understand everything that’s going on. But just beyond irrigation, we’ve been working with Tubo with with whole replant, you know, really helping us better. You know, when we replanted, we decided to right, we’re replanting for the next 30 years. We want to make wine 30 years from now in a climate where we’re 30 years from now. You know, a Swiss rose was historically planted back in the 90s with the ideas of the 90s by people who probably learned how to make wine maybe in the 70s.
And so, you know, it was planted maybe with not, you know, not in the way that should have been, you know, for the climate of today. And so we we had a couple of meetings with TBO and you know with that we decided to change how we how we prune to change how the trellis is made up change the root stocks and the rest of it and it’s and it’s been great having having TBO and the team from fruition from from A to Z there. yeah it’s been great. I don’t know. Yeah. And what I was just going to ask and then like what’s the what does the day-to-day look like? I think that’s interesting too especially like I really want to and I was going to ask talk a bit about pre-sap just quickly just pre-sap flow because obviously you know sap flow for just for context for those no fruition sap flow is kind of really for premium sites for where you want to grow high-end wine and then for other areas it’s more of a manual approach which so was taken because of the damage.
So yeah talk a bit about that. So, so the manual approach it requires a bit of labor, but honestly, you just get faster and faster and faster. We Thibaut, maybe I’m doing it wrong, but this is what we do. We go through once a week and we do sheet alongation at the beginning of the season. You flag the vines. So, you have your reference point in the block you want to do. You flag the vines, you flag the shoots, you me the shoots, and you do it once a week. I mean, we figured out that for each spot we’re doing, maybe with shooting onation, you’re looking at 20 minutes, half an hour, but it gets quicker, it gets faster, and the and the information you get out of it is huge.
and then when it comes to the sugar loading, well, then there’s also the Apexes, but that’s you just download an app and the Apexes are done very quickly. And then with the sugar loading well it’s like taking samples during for you know we all take samples for to see where we are for for maturity controls maturity sampling. You just start it earlier. It it does require you to be you know not swat slams we we take interns to do this for us and and I’ve noticed that’s that’s the best way to do it is that you can go send them out to the vineyard and go do it. What we have done is that you know the first years we just did five sites and now we’re expanding to doing the sheet mullegation and the manual controls on basically all our sites because we just find the information is is so key and then you just upload it up into BT3 or you just send it to the team at fruition and they’ll do it for you.
They already speak to their B360 already speaks to our weather stations on site and so that automatically uploads all the grade degree days. And then at the moment, the big one for us is before we went to Lumo, I’m going to rep Lumo here. We had to manually upload all our irrigation. So comp CS, we just put them into CSV files and upload it and it does automatically. Now that we’ve we’ve got better irrigation management and tracking it, they should just all magically do it together. And the team from Fruition just send out emails once a week being like, we don’t think you need irrigating in these blocks. We think you need irrigate in these blocks.
looking at the weather forecast and the rest of it as a simplified simplified approach. yeah, and you know, whenever we have a question or we’ve got some, you know, we’re not sure about something, you know, we jump on a call with them, send them an email, and we have calls, we have meetings with them at the beginning and end of each period. So, every sort of six weeks, two months, we’re we’re meeting up with them. Yeah. TB, unless I I hope I haven’t I hope I haven’t, you know, said the wrong things, but that’s roughly True. It’s perfect. Yeah. I haven’t been paid by tuition. I’m just I’m putting this out there. Yeah.
Yeah. is there anything you want to add, Thibaut, and then I’ll transition us to Q&A. No, I’m good. Maybe maybe one final question, Michael, and then everyone. so I’m going to move us to Q&A, please, in the chat or you can unmute yourself and ask a question. I’ve prepared whenever I talk with Thibaut, I always have about 32 questions to ask. Even watching this now, I always get new ones. but so I’m going to ask Michael a question and then yeah, we’ll transition to Q&A. So you can again please throw right now throw into the chat and I’ll ask them for you or you can unmute yourself as well and just kind of jump in.
and so we’ll kind of do that for another 50 minutes. But my my final question, Michael, was how stressful was it coming from kind of approach you’ve been taking for a number of years at Associ like like and my my my sec second part of that question is how long were some of those gaps in the kind of the heat of the summer? Like how far have you been pushing? Yeah. So the first the first couple of years 2023 was the first year we really did it and we decided to do a couple of blocks our way and a couple of blocks the way and and yeah some of the gaps went on longer but we were hop well longer than we were expecting but in the end you know we were we’re happy with what we saw.
You know the vine could could hold it. What for us really was it was irrigating more earlier in the season and stopping early. That’s the key for us is is realizing how dry and how really paying attention on on the winter we’ve had and the weather we’ve had and thinking actually wow we really need to put a lot of water down very early in the season and then stop earlier and then continue maybe later on. And it’s maybe slightly nerve-wracking at the beginning, but trust them, you know, we very quickly went the whole vineyard. We just listened to perition very quickly. so yeah, they know, they trust that is what I’m saying. You you’ll be fine.
Do do you remember how long some of the gaps were between like how long you were going I I should have pulled this up beforehand, but July, August, I don’t have off the top of my head. I mean weeks, weeks, weeks. Yeah. In in the middle of summer. In the middle of summer. Yeah. Several weeks in the middle of summer. Cool. Well, thanks, Michael. really appreciate you sharing, taking the time. so, well, I’m going to move us to Q&A and I’ll just make a quick comment. So, obviously, Fitionian just on the business of Fruition is a kind of consultancy and that’s kind of their business model. They work around the world. obviously if you’re ever interested in working with them.
we ourselves rely on them heavily and work with them with a number of clients. So we’re we’re pretty excited and there’s kind of different approaches that they take. So depending on the size, all kinds of different scales and things like that. So I’m going to move us to Q&A. actually one other thing I’ll say to kind of today what we wanted to focus on was kind of very high level irrigation concepts. Obviously we could have gone into a lot more detail in any of this. Obviously that there we could have d dove really deep and also there’s a lot more with fruition a lot more I’ve learned working with Thibaut around they’ve got some really cool data you can find it online I’m happy to share a presentation they did around some of their work in Palmer around cover crops so they’ve cover crops actually have a really big impact there’s lots on cover cropping plant management you know we might get into this a bit with questions but like how do you actually handle a heat wave what should you be doing with the canopy based on different stages there’s just really a lot we could go into.
We wanted to obviously focus a bit more in general irrigation and wine quality today which could be its own multi-part series but there’s a lot of of different topics we can’t go over and please if you have questions about it please while we have Thibaut feel free to jump in and I’ll kick off with our first question Thibaut just around now what about whites and especially like if you’re thinking about different styles of white wine how are you approaching that versus say Michael with one of his Merllo how does that change the kind of generally the strategy you’re taking. Yeah. So you’ve understood for for the red we try to induce some moderate but strong water deficit lasting when I say strong I lasting weeks with with a wise we will probably not do that at all.
We will seek to actually extend the duration of period 2 and once we are getting into the phase where the stomata don’t regulate their how open they are we are trying to actually not tolerate so much of a stomata closure. So we will probably alleviate water deficit more regularly. Still the philosophy will be to train the plants to resist drought. So for that we would space out irrigations in between two events to teach the plants how to cope with drought intervals. But we will probably not tolerate a level of water deficit that is as limiting as it would be say for red that you want to age 10 years. Perfect. yeah that’s great because so I’m going to open there is another part on nitrogen but I I don’t have time to with we will have a different handling of the nitrogen for aromas also of course.
Perfect. Yeah I’ll open the floor to questions and if there’s a bit of a break I again I’ve got about 30 more so please jump in if you have any questions. Okay. Oh so Shay yeah Shay’s got a question here. could you speak to connection between irrigation strategy and canopy measure management? We typically hedge and removing laterals plus we’re doing leaf removal. Should we be doing this with this type of irrigation strategy and what are the expected impacts on quality? Yeah. that’s okay. So something I didn’t elaborate is the concept of basil crop coefficient. So in fact what we are doing at the end of the canopy growth we are looking at what is the maximum amount of water the vine can carry.
We speak of hydraulically hydraulic conductivity. So what you are doing when you’re removing leaves hedging at different height at different time moving the laterals you are affecting the total amount of water that the plant needs to put into motion to keep to stay happy and healthy. So definitely your interventions on the canopy will drive the need the timing when the water is needed for the plant. So the method will not change but definitely by manipulating the canopy you are manipulating the demand and so since with irrigation you are manipulating the supply. changing the demand will inexorably change the pace at which you’re going to satisfy with with a different offer. So I can see that you would probably space out even more your irrigations if you had reduced the total amount of light that is being intercepted by your canopy.
And then the question is how do you manage the microporosity? How do you manage the microclimate? Should you trim your vineyards to provide a nice protective environment during period 4? Even if that means pushing a little bit more the laterals, but then the extra water use due to the presence of lateral, can it be compensated by a reduction of canopy size? Probably yes. To which percentage that’s where we are starting to monitor that. So you are asking the right question and I think the path will be to really be sober with irrigation because the more we water the more we dilute the more we are actually fighting against our making goals. So we need to put water but only when it’s necessary and a way to reduce the water addiction is to reduce the lifer size.
Okay. You have any followup there, Shay? Or that that answered the question? Oh, I’ve got all kinds of things on my mind, but I think I I have a feeling that’s for you and I to just figure out our strategy, right, for our site,, Chris. So, yeah. Yeah. Cool. Maybe just as a followup for that, that T, could you talk a little bit about how you’ve been changing some of your thinking around canopy volume? Because obviously, just to really clarify, what you’re talking about with canopy area is you’re talking about pushing the canopy wider, increasing lateral. so that the width of the canopy is increased. Trying to increase that as much as possible to increase leaf interception but then shortening so that maybe the total leaf surface area that you have is shrinking is talk please about that please.
Yeah. Yeah. Well to put it simply you have to pick your poison and I think we are more at risk of losing quality in terms of wine if during that period five the fruit is overexposed. So I I’d rather tolerate a little bit more shade around the cluster because I know that when the time comes of deciding whether or not we want to postpone harvest a good protective microclimate provided by the lateral might be more adequate than watering because at that time the watering will serve the canopy but will not go into the into the fruit. So that’s the first consideration. Do you change the shape of your canopy tackling water use and photosynthetic activities or tackling the microclimate environment of the clusters?
That’s for the laterals. And then for the height basically the greater height and the greater spread is going to open the faucet through which the water is going to vaporize into the atmosphere. So by upping or downing the size of the light you intercept by means of the blade of your hedging height or by means of tolerating more or less width or more or less porosity by removing leaf layers is going to drive how quickly you’re going to dry out your root reservoir. So if you actually maintain a nice microclimate around your cluster, a sufficient amount of leaves to reconstitute sufficient reserves, then maybe once you have done that, you can afford to have fewer leaves so that you keep more water for later and you make your vineyard not so dependent on your next irrigation.
You foster drought resiliency. Excellent. Thanks. Other questions? so Lindsay has a question about watering vineyards for sparkling wine production. we’ve been starting to pick around the third week of August when it’s still very hot. So, how do what can we do with sparkling wine in that context? so with sparkling wine, typically you harvest the food while you’re still in the sugar loading. So the fruit is still technically hydraulically connected. So essentially the watering you may have if it’s excessive might u dilute further the aromomas but that may actually be align with your production objectives if you want to lower the Brix. So it’s it’s it’s it’s not an easy answer.
I I should understand better what your production objectives are, what your logistic constraint are, but in a big picture, it doesn’t seem defeating the purpose of having large berries keeping their fresh and and with a high pool of acidity. The the issue I see is that if you irrigate too much during P3, you may delay the start of sugar loading. And if you delay the start of sugar loading, you may have more heterogenity berry to berry and the call of picking around the third week of August might be a little bit more difficult to make because we’ll have to manage more berry to berry heterogenities. So that that’s why your question is not simple to answer and don’t forget that if you are in P4 your irrigation still affects the plant but through the flimian pathways not through the zyllem so you might be also better off misting that’s what I’m thinking yeah Lindsay if you have a follow-up to that throw that in the chat and we’ll follow up I I had one other quick question I think that’d be helpful for people we obviously talked about sap flow.
So you kind of in terms of manual tools you talked about shoe long elongation and then for those premium sites obviously having safow sensors but where that’s not possible or it’s not a premium site whatever can you talk a bit about just the quickly about using apex monitoring and why shoot you measure shoots until you hedge or you hit your max canopy and then you what other tools we can use if we don’t have sapflow sensors to make irrigation decisions and quality. Essentially you are trying to detect the point in time considering the season where there is a switch whereby the plant stops investing its energy towards more green stuff essentially vegetative organs might be the roots might be the trunk might be the leaves as opposed to vesting its energy flow towards reproductive organs the fruit.
And we know that as long as the conditions are met for the vines to push the aexes to be active that switch has not been acted upon. So we as long as we see this activity going on, we know the plant is managing its pool of carbohydrates probably as a priority over managing the ripening of its offsprings which which are the fruits. And so there is less of an incentive to get that offspring very appealing for a bird rich in sugar rich in color so that we can go and conquer different niches. So tracing the point in time where there is that shift meaning the aexus activity starts to decline tells us that the plant is shifting its physiological metabolism towards the secondary metabolites which not only serves the birds for dissemination but also the wine makers goal.
So that’s why we use it as a proxy for lack of a better one in order to organize the schedule of the next irrigations. Excellent. Yeah. And so you’ll go around and actually just it’s actually looking at Apexes. There’s there’s lots of research and even public tools on this and using that as a tool for that decision. we’re just hitting 10 here. Is there any final questions? Maybe one final question. I’ll give about 30 seconds here. Please pop up. If not, I’ll close this down. Perfect. Well,, thanks everyone. I,, yeah, there’s Oh, here we go. Okay, Lindsay, thank you. Final question from Lindsay and then I’ll wrap us up. so how does her question TBO is just how does Vine age come into play when you’re thinking about strategy?
the the vine age. You you remember the the graph I showed you where there was a free fall in vine water need satisfaction. That was meaning that on day one the vine was using five liters when the weather was asking five. On day two the vine was using four liters when the weather was asking five. On the day three the weather the plant was using three liters when the weather was asking five. To make it simple what we see is that vine age buffer the speed at which we have that collapse. So the vine will go from maybe not starting off at five but maybe starting at three and a half and on day two it will be at 3.4 3.3.
So vine age essentially ease and smoothen the collapse of vine water use vine water need satisfaction. So that will drive a different frequency of irrigation for sure. Excellent. Yeah it’s a good question. Obviously, again, something else we could go a lot more into. so I’m going to end us here. kind of a heads up, we’re going to there’s a recording. I’ve recorded this, so we’ll send out a recording to everyone. We had lots of people asking for that. we’ll we’re going to do a follow-up webinar. I’ve talked with Thibaut, so probably in a month or two, couple months on some related, but expanding on some of these topics, introducing some new ones.
and as well, Thibaut’s going to be here at some point in July. we’re just scheduling that to meet with some clients. I’d highly recommend checking out, just even his published research, a lot of what Fruition’s done. They’ve got lots of resources online. It’s been a huge huge help for us. and even just fitting it and it’s been very interesting. Obviously, like a lot of us are familiar with Marcus Keller. There’s lots of overlap there. you know, between kind of how they think about irrigation and timing and strategy and some important differences as well. so just in closing, I’d really like appreciate you Thibaut taking the time to kind of look over data, look at what we’re doing, and share that with us.
So, thank you so much. But thank you for these wonderful opportunities and it’s nice to interact with Canadian. Awesome. Thanks everyone. Hope you have a good day. Bye. Bye.
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