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Double A Vineyards is a family owned operation dedicated to supplying you with high quality grapevines, along with berry plants, figs trees and juice for wine making. We began production in 1990 with a small number of grapevine cuttings; since then, we have grown to over two million. We have also increased our grapevine variety list to over 150, with production of other varieties by request. Beyond offering a robust plant selection, we are also committed to treating our customers how we’d want to be treated – like family.
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Double A Vineyards offers a full line of crop protection products available to our customers. There are several grape diseases that can cause crop loss directly, through infection of fruit, or indirectly, through loss of leaf area. Various insects feed on grape flowers, fruit, leaves, and roots, resulting …
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Marketing Specialist, Danielle Huber It’s a constant battle in the wine industry to please the consumer. We’re always trying to evolve the pallet, improve the vessel, and advance the process. As consumers, we want to pay less and get more. That’s why we have boxed wine! We want convenience. Hence, wine bottles with screw tops, …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Part I provided an introduction to the major diseases that affect grapes and some options for early season disease control in vineyards. Please refer to that article for links to fact sheets for five major grape diseases – anthracnose, Phomopsis, black rot, downy mildew, and powdery mildew. This article …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Managing disease is a key component to successful grape production. Cultural practices and variety selection can have a large impact on disease pressure and susceptibility, but most grape growers rely, to some extent, on chemical fungicide applications in order to produce disease-free fruit and foliage for the production …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Most grape growers recognize the need to determine the nutritional status of their soil prior to planting, but it is also important to monitor the nutritional status of the vineyard on a regular basis once it is bearing fruit. Ideally, soil and petiole testing are …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Over the years (25 and counting!), Double A Vineyards has built a large clientele with varied interests that range from commercial vineyard and winery owners to the backyard hobbyist. This article is aimed at the latter, especially our customers who decide they want to grow …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. When trouble-shooting the cause of poor growth in vineyards (especially newly-planted ones) competition from weeds is one of the first things to consider. In my experience, new growers often underestimate the competitive effects of weeds in the vineyard. This article will summarize some of the concepts …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Chemical pest management options for growers with only a few vines are limited. While non-restricted use pesticides can be purchased and used by anyone (meaning, anyone who reads and understands the pesticide label prior to application and applies it legally), they usually come in package …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Small vineyard owners often find that they need to spray chemicals for control of weeds, insects, and disease, but can’t justify the expense of a tractor-operated sprayer (not to mention the tractor). The need for chemical applications to control grapevine diseases can be minimized by …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Winter injury caused by low winter temperatures is an important limiting factor to grape production in many regions the United States. Our Grapevine Characteristics Chart lists grape varieties by their winter hardiness according to USDA hardiness zone. Hardiness is determined by using a number of sources, including university publications, …
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The “polar vortex” of cold Arctic air that affected a large portion of the continental United States during early January 2014 was responsible for widespread transportation delays and a shutdown of activities at many schools and businesses. Blizzard conditions persisted for several days near Buffalo, New York, for the first time since 1993. Air temperatures …
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There are many factors that influence whether or not a specific grape selection will survive and be capable of producing high quality fruit at a certain location, including winter hardiness, length of growing season, and risk of spring frost. A common measure of the growing season is Growing Degree Days (GDD). Grapevine development during the …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Selecting the proper rootstock for your vineyard is just as important as variety selection. Rootstocks are used to induce or reduce scion vigor or to overcome specific soil limitations caused by physical factors such as soil pH and high salt content, or biological factors such as phylloxera, nematodes, …
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Once an appropriate variety and rootstock are chosen for a site, vineyard design becomes an important consideration that will affect the performance of the vineyard for its lifetime. Considerations include row orientation, vine spacing between rows and within the row, and trellis height. Row Orientation The optimum orientation of vineyard rows is north to south …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Grapevine red blotch-associated virus (GRBaV) is a recently identified virus which represents the latest addition to the long list of graft-transmissible agents that have been discovered in grapevines. This article will summarize what is currently known and not known about red blotch, and the future for the …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. After nearly twelve months of taking care of your vineyards, the last decision you make can be the most agonizing and difficult– when is it time to harvest the fruit? As grapes mature, they develop aromas and flavors, and the chemical composition of the fruit changes. …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Higher than average precipitation across many parts of the Eastern and Midwestern states has brought disease management issues to the forefront. Over the past several weeks, our staff has been contacted by grape growers from many growing regions with disease problems in their vineyards, many which …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. It is the time of year when our office starts receiving calls about “bumps” forming on grape leaves. While pest identification is usually quite difficult when based solely on a rough description of the symptoms, “bumps” on grapevine leaves are almost always associated with the aerial, …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Choosing an appropriate training system for your vineyard is one of the most important decisions you will make; that decision will affect potential productivity and profitability for the life of the vineyard. The most appropriate training system for your vineyard is based primarily on growth habit …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. With Jim Kamas, Assistant Professor & ExtensionSpecialist – Pomology & Viticulture, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Fredericksburg, Texas Grape growers in southern regions of the United States face a potential problem not encountered by growers in more northern regions–Pierce’s disease (PD) of grape. An excellent resource, Pierce’s Disease …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. The use of grow tubes in vineyard establishment has become popular in the past decade or two. Obviously, vineyards have been planted for thousands of years without the use of plant shelters, but the tubes do provide some positive benefits. This article will summarize some research …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Cover crop management is an important consideration in viticulture. Most vineyards are managed with some kind of ground cover in the row middles, while minimizing weed competition near the vines. There are many benefits from growing cover crops in row middles. These include reduced risk of …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Powdery mildew (PM) is an important vineyard disease worldwide. As pointed out by Cornell University grape plant pathologist Wayne Wilcox, Eastern North America is the origin of powdery mildew, and we cannot grow grapes here without controlling it. Sulfur is a traditional material used to control …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. This month’s article is inspired by several e-mails and phone calls received over the past few weeks from all over the country regarding yellow jackets in vineyards and how to control them. Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions to this group of insects, and they can …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. After successfully managing a crop to within weeks or even days of harvest, few things can be as frustrating as fruit damaged by birds and other pests. In addition to direct loss of fruit, bird-damaged fruit is also more susceptible to various fruit rots that can cause …
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Top Photo Left: ‘Concord’ on TWC; Top Photo Right: ‘Vidal’ on TWC; Bottom Photo Left: ‘Pinot Gris’ on VSP, prior to leaf pulling; Bottom Photo Right: ‘Pinot Gris’ on VSP, after leaf pulling Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. The production of large crops of high quality fruit requires that grapevines be pruned and trained …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Spring has sprung (albeit 3-4 weeks early in Western New York) and Double A Vineyards has begun shipping vines to our customers in warmer climates. This month’s article will cover the basics of pre-plant land preparation, how to handle vines once you receive them, methods of …
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Entire textbooks (or chapters of textbooks, anyway) have been devoted to the topic of pruning, training, and trellising grapevines. This article will provide a brief overview of the main concepts of pruning grapevines, with emphasis on pruning during vineyard establishment. Dormant grapevine pruning during vineyard establishment is performed annually with two main goals in …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. Now that harvest is over and winter is approaching, the staff at Double A Vineyards is starting to get a lot of phone calls and e-mails from our customers asking for assistance in selecting appropriate varieties to grow on their sites. While many of our customers …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. As the 2011 growing season comes to an end, we all know what comes next – winter. In areas where extreme cold temperature or temperature drops occur, winter protection of grapevines may be necessary. By their nature, grafted vines are most susceptible to winter injury, particularly …
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Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc. After nearly twelve months of taking care of your vineyards, the last decision you make can be the most agonizing and difficult– when is it time to harvest the fruit? As grapes mature, they develop aromas and flavors, and the chemical composition of the fruit …
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