I live in Vancouver BC. I have a 3 year old green grapes and I do not remember the variety. It has thick skin. Last year the fruits were strongly flavoured and sweet with an tardy after taste. This year, I had an abundant crop and had stripped a lot of the leaves off for maximum sun exposure to the grapes. This year my grapes are tasteless and not sweet at all. It still retains that tardy after taste. What did I do wrong? May be I took too much leaves off? I am thinking of shovel pruning it but yet feel that I should at least give it one more year.
If it was good recently will probably be good again within a few years. Stripping leaves I don't know the benefit of, I wouldn't do that myself.
Try making some wine ;) grapes for eating are far more work than for wine production, for wine you want quantity, but for eating its quality, you need to thin the number of bunches and possibly even thin the number of grapes per bunch.
From May 1 to Sept. 23/05 was about 1 deg C warmer for daily mean temperatures except August which was about 1 deg cooler than '06, and the various crop heat measures were also higher but only by ~1 to 3%. This might mean a week later to ripen, though there are certainly other factors that will effect that. We had only about 60% of the water in '06 compared to '05, that gives them less to work with but often (properly thinned, but who can tell in advance?) results in more flavor. "Oscar" bite your tongue! "for wine you want quantity..." You'll have a visit from the Wine Grape Growers Police with that kind of talk. A great grape is great for either eating or winemaking. Actually, a lot of flavor is sacrificed for "seedlessness" in eating grapes. Try a really well grown Pinot Noir grape sometime for eating. OK, I'll admit you can to some extent "fix" a less than ideal wine grape by clever winemaking proceedures while you're pretty much stuck with whatever is in your mouth as far as table grapes go. Leaf removal to allow the sun to reach the bunch is common practice, but the word "stripping" might imply a bit too much enthusiasm. Thinning (bunch removal) is also used to increase the "personality" of a crop. If you've had a good year, give it another chance. Leave them on the vine a bit longer (if it's not too late) this year; mid October would not be an unusual harvest date. Ralph
