2019, Jiu Jitsu then Wine

     If you fail to plan then you plan to fail. This little bit of advice was read or heard somewhere and made an impression. Obviously I'm one of those people that needs to set goals and little by little try to achieve them. In 2019 I will fight in at least two BJJ tournaments. This first will be the Pans in March and the second will be the Masters in August.
     Both of these tournaments are IBJJF and I may venture into some local tournaments also. Last year I competed in two Grappling Industries competitions and did well enough to let me know that my skills are indeed improving. These tournaments are very much like taking wine tests. You spend a great deal of time before hand practicing: drilling note cards on regions, terroir, varietals, growing methods, training methods, fermentation process, finishing, bottling and labeling.  
     And That's just the note cards. You must taste, and that takes time and effort. Time and effort to distinguish the minute differences of say Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand (grapefruit bomb to the face with a ton of grass) vs Pouilly Fume (more subtle fruit and the smokey minerality the silax brings). Repetitions of drinking Pinot Noir to see the difference in acidity between Burgundy and Oregon.
     Lastly, depending on which group you're studying for you'll need to dance the dance of "service" where you gracefully practice opening certain wines, answering questions on the fly and all the while keeping composure. Not as easy as it sounds. Just like jiu jitsu.  The similarities in practice, at least to me are very similar.
     In jiu jitsu I'm just figuring out that in trying to flow (shout out to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) work or a few techniques chained together. And practice the hell out of it. Same with wine. Remember the FFEW? Fruit, floral, earth and wood generally make up every wine you're bound to try from bubbles to still white or red and even to late harvest and dessert wines. These four descriptors chained together will give you a great feel for any wine. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm gonna do to further my wine learning.
     Enough babbling about what I do and move to on the wine question of the day. Identify the most important trunk diseases in vineyards around the world. How can they be best controlled and managed?

     The most important trunk diseases affecting vineyards today are Esca which is prevalent in Europe, Eutypa in California and Botryosphaeria and Phomopsis dieback. While these are the four main culprits causing slow sickness in wines they are similar in the way that they attack and finally kill a single plant and if not dealt with the entire vineyard.
     Controlling these diseases should be viewed on an individual basis because how you deal with a young vineyard will be different than treating a mature one. One must first know that they have a problem of this type. Symptoms include black spots or wood cankers, stunted shoots and finally dead spurs.
     If the vineyard is young then one should start with clean stock. A vineyard will produce much more slowly than are healthy one. Abiotic stress should also be considered because over or under watering, poor planting practices and overcrowding in planting will cause young vines not to concentrate on their own immune system.
     Pruning is also a major factor in contracting trunk disease because if one prunes in December then the vines will take a longer amount of time to heal than if you pruned later in the season.  If one delays pruning just a couple of months into February one will find that the ability of the vine to heal will takes days rather than months. 
     There is also the practice of double pruning which starts in December or January with the first pass often pruning about a foot or twelve inches above last season's spur. The second pass will occur in February or later on. This pruning session will go down to the spur. This way the initial prune is removed and if it is infected (the initial cut) then it is taken away from the plant.
     After pruning should come active wound with lime sulfur. This will aid in the prevention of incoming spores.  There are chemical alternatives to sulfur but then you are adding foreign chemicals that may add problems later on in the consumer.
     If a mature vineyard of ten to twelve years is infected then one can perform sever cuttings or surgery requiring the removal of specific sections or whole plants themselves. In Australia they will cut four inches below the infected area, In New Zealand they double it going for eight. Some old world wine regions like France will cut twelve to eighteen inches above ground and chuck the rest.
     The contaminated sections should be carted off to a distant location and burned. This is because if the infected sections are left, the disease inside the wood could still be flourishing and still shoot out their spores affecting yet more plants.