Al Vybiral Grower Interview

Tyler Bertsch
We'll let’s go ahead and get started. This is Tyler Bertsch and I'm here with…

Al Vybiral
Al Vybiral

Tyler Bertsch
So I guess the first thing is, how did you get into growing grapes?

Al Vybiral
Back in 2012. Actually, prior to that, I got word of these viticulture workshops sponsored by the University of Nebraska. I think most of them earlier were probably down in Nebraska City. And during the summer, I just didn't have time to get away. I'm a crop consultant, agronomist, and doing other things at the time, and I just didn't have time to get down there during the summer months. And I found out one year, it was 2002, that there was gonna be one of those viticulture workshops down in the area of where James Arthur's Vineyard is, near Raymond.

It was to visit several vineyards, and I didn't know anyone who was there. I went down, and we visited several vineyards, ended at James Arthur Vineyards, and I just got the notion that day that this is something I'd like to do. So then I started going to workshops. There were workshops offered by the university. Seemed there was always a fall viticulture workshop, then there'd be one the following growing season, as I recall. And then I decided that I wanted to do that. And on the farm here, between Wahoo and Mead, farm where I grew up, I asked my mom if I could grow grapes and live on the corner of an intersection, and the driveway comes in and goes out. Comes in one road and goes out the other, and it isolates a little over an acre from those eighty acres. And I asked my mom if I could plant grapes there. She said, "Sure, fine, go ahead,."

And then I started asking more questions, and actually, I don't know if it was before or after that, I started asking some people if they thought it would be suitable, because my impression of the grape growers was that they had to be on the side of these hills, you see in Italy and Germany and places that, really rugged ground. And I asked a guy at the time who was James Arthur's vineyard manager. His name was Matt, and I asked Matt to come up to my place and look at all these fields and showed him a few of the farms that my parents owned, and I showed him, "Well, what about this one right here?" And he said, "Yeah, fine, go ahead, do it. Don't look back." And so I ran out of excuses not to do this. I knew it would be a big undertaking. So in 2005, I established the vineyard. And once I decided I was going to do it, I asked Paul Reed what varieties I should grow. He suggested Frontenac, La Crosse, and Brianna. So I have a third of an acre of each of those. But actually, I knew enough by going to these workshops that before you plant a single vine, you have to have a home for them. Either you're going to make your own wine or sell it to someone else. So at the time, there was a winery roughly between Yutan and Ashland, and I approached the winemaker there. I said to her, "All right, so I want these three varieties: Frontenac, La Crosse, and Brianna. If I planted those, would you be interested in buying them?" She said yes, but I said, "Okay, I have a plan actually, so that's a few years away. We won't worry about contracts or anything until you're ready to harvest." And what would have been my first harvest. In 2007, my first harvest, she went out of business.

Tyler Bertsch
Oh dang.

Al Vybiral
Well, she and her husband got divorced, and he was doing all the work in the vineyard. She was the winemaker, and she had a full-time job, I think, with the city of Ashland, so she said, "I just can't do it all myself." So actually, it would've been 2008. 2008 would've been my first harvest. And in that same year, there were two huge hailstorms down in the area, one week apart, down in the area of JAV, and their vineyards were okay, but several of his growers got wiped out. So their vineyard manager called me and said, "Al, what grapes do you grow?" I said, "I grow these Frontenac, La Crosse, and Brianna." He said, "What are you doing with them?" I said, "They need a home." So then that started my relationship with JAV, selling grapes to them.

Tyler Bertsch
Nice.

Al Vybiral
So I had a plant-growing background, but just corn, wheat, soybeans, that's what I knew. But I didn't know anything about grape growing because I knew it was a specialty crop, and it took a lot of work. But the more I learned about it, the more intrigued I got about what I grew.

Tyler Bertsch
Interesting. So when did your first vine go in?

Al Vybiral
2005.

Al Vybiral
And it was a La Crosse. I remember that.

Tyler Bertsch
So did you plant them at different years or

Al Vybiral
They were all put in at the same time.

Tyler Bertsch
Oh, okay. Just La Crosse was the first one.

Al Vybiral
La Crosse, Frontenac, and Brianna. Yes.

Tyler Bertsch
Did anybody think you were crazy?

Al Vybiral
I have good neighbors, and they kept it to themselves. I remember one neighbor who drove by with his brother. "What is he doing?" because I had all the posts on the ground. I was starting to put the posts in, and I remember one brother said, "What is he...?" And one said, "He's putting in a vineyard." And another guy I knew drove by and thought, "Al has lost his mind." because in another state, he has relatives that grow grapes. He said, "We used to go down there, Al, it was horrible." He's said, "Al has lost his mind." But I'm sure people think that, so I'm fine.

Tyler Bertsch
You have to be a little crazy to do this, right?

Al Vybiral
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Tyler Bertsch
That's what makes it fun. So who taught you, or did you mostly just teach yourself? What resources did you use?

Al Vybiral
Primarily the workshops put on by the university. I mean, we had our annual conference, and Paul would have at least one in-season viticulture workshop. At the time, our annual Grape Growth Conference was in March for several years. But then I think he'd have one in October or November, something like that. So that was my primary one. So yeah, university almost exclusively, and I'd pick up stuff on the internet too. But for several years, it was the university, Paul putting together those workshops and inviting people for our annual conference to come and speak.

Tyler Bertsch
Nice. What were some things that surprised you when you first started growing grapes?

Al Vybiral
Once they're in the ground, once they're established, is how fast grapes grow. Yeah, it's a hundred-yard dash, and the vines have a ninety-yard head start on you. The speed at which those spurs grow in season is overwhelming. I was finding it a hard time to keep up with it, and they're so vigorous. Our vines are extremely vigorous. I'm not saying that viniferas aren't vigorous, but I think over time, they might have been selected to be not quite as vigorous, and might be grown on poorer soils. With that in mind, kind of keep them maybe more manageable. But a lot of times, some of our cold-hearty hybrids still have a lot of relation to the stuff that grows in the fence line. So very vigorous, and we're in very fertile soils, and they go crazy. It's really overwhelming at times.

Tyler Bertsch
So of the three, which one's the most vigorous, if you had to say?

Al Vybiral
Well, they're all vigorous, but the one that is my most dependable, most consistent producer is the Brianna, and it has been during the drought prior to last year. I had four years in a row of drought. Horrible. I mean, the profile was just….

Tyler Bertsch
Like the last few years?

Al Vybiral
Yeah. Last year was okay.

Al Vybiral
Even though it wasn't as much rain as you get on average, it was a lot. But four years prior to that, it was horrible here. And the profile, even in a dry year, mature vines are okay, because their roots are so deep, they're not phased. But the profile was dry down to fifteen feet. There was just no moisture. I could tell because when I prune in spring, they always weep. They wouldn't. There was just no moisture there. So the Brianna has done good, looks good, but the Frontenac and La Cross haven't. They look really, really rough right now, and I have my theories, but it doesn't really make sense, because in the past, they've been extremely vigorous, so I know they have to have an extensive root system. But I'm not sure why.

Tyler Bertsch
What's your soil type?

Al Vybiral
A silty clay loam, and it's very fertile. I mean, it's all Class I and Class II farm ground around there, and it's well-drained. The only thing I can think of is that it doesn't make sense, the Brianna I got from a nursery, so it came with year-old plants, basically. The Frontenac and La Cross were started from cuttings, and I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I got the cuttings from a guy in the area who had a vineyard. He kept cuttings of those two varieties that I wanted, and he also built my trellis, which is basically a fence because he had the background and the equipment to do that. And the day after we completed the trellising, or actually that night, he augered holes for the Brianna, because he had the roots, and we got six inches of rain that night. It was an incredible storm. Some of those three-foot holes still had water in at the end of a month. So I waited a day, and the ground was so muddy, I just went along with the cuttings, and because the guy put them in bundles and put them in cold water, I just left them in the water until I was ready to use them. Yeah, I had no idea what I was doing. I just stuck them in the ground. I put two canes per site, two twigs per site, and if one of them took off, I just cut the other one away because you only want one there. And I had eighty-eight percent success with the La Cross and ninety-three percent success with the Frontenac.

Tyler Bertsch
Wow!

Al Vybiral
I didn't know there's a proper way to do that. You let callus develop on the end of the twig, that gel, and roots grow from that, and you put it in a medium potting soil or something

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah

Al Vybiral
I knew none of that. I just stuck them in the ground, and they took off, and over the years, they've been extremely vigorous. I mean, the canopy has kind of gotten away from me. So I know they have extensive root systems, so I don't know why those two didn't fare as well. I mean, the plants are still alive, but got good growth last year on about fifty percent of the trunk, at least this year on those. But during that drought, because I had trunk cane disease, I would just cut a vine off, and you wait for new shoots from the base. Well, if you don't get rain, you don't get much. You just got a bunch of spindly little twigs. So the plants are alive, but for years I didn't get any regrowth. because in eastern Nebraska, you shouldn't have to irrigate.

Tyler Bertsch
No.

Al Vybiral
You just shouldn't. But those four years were just horrible. But the Brianna always had a fair canopy at least, even in the driest years. But the others two didn't, and I don't know if it goes back to starting with a rooted plant with the Brianna and not with the others. Because the others, I know they have to have extensive root systems.

Tyler Bertsch
That's about 20 years. You don't think that would

Al Vybiral
Yeah.

Tyler Bertsch
-it's

Al Vybiral
And yeah, they got canopy to spare. I mean, it was just out of control a lot of times. Yeah, it happens.

Tyler Bertsch
Are they high wire cordon, all of them?

Al Vybiral
I tried to grow... I like the Smart-Dyson system, because Dr. Richard Smart, if you're familiar with him

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah

Al Vybiral
... he spoke at our conferences a couple times, and I liked what he had to say about that. So essentially, it's a VSP with catch wires below the cordon. Try to split the canopy to accommodate the high vigor, basically, is what it's for. So I made that, but it acts more like a VSP, but it's-

Tyler Bertsch
Do you like that better than high cordon or any?

Al Vybiral
I'm not gonna change it. There's no way. I worked too hard to put in all those positioning wires. I'm never going to change it. And I don't quite understand the high cordon. I mean, I've seen them, but exposing those clusters and stuff... I know some research shows that it's more productive than a VSP, but I kinda prefer the VSP. I just do.

Tyler Bertsch
Do you think that affected when you were bringing grapes into the winery, was it different timing than other people because it was trained different, or still about the same?

Al Vybiral
For harvest, I would take Brix numbers and pH for James Arthur, that's who I sell to, but I go on their harvest schedule because when they bring in Brianna, they wanna bring everyone's Brianna.

Tyler Bertsch
Right.

Al Vybiral
And they won't bring in La Crosse. They wanna bring in everyone's La Crosse. So I just go off of that, and I haven't seen any significant differences off of the numbers as far as pH and Brix goes. There was only one year that it deviated from our harvest schedule ever, and I think it was 2012, and it was even hotter than the previous few years.

Tyler Bertsch
It was a drought year.

Al Vybiral
It was.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
But it got hot so early. In March, we had 80 and 90-degree days

Tyler Bertsch
I remember that

Al Vybiral
... several of them, and it had bud break about a month early. And so harvest in August was two weeks early. Harvest on August 2nd, 3rd, rather than

Tyler Bertsch
Every variety, all three?

Al Vybiral
Well, yes, but we always harvested them at different weeks.

Tyler Bertsch
Right.

Al Vybiral
It's always Brianna first, La Crosse next, because you ideally harvest Brianna before the Brix get to 20 because it has the Labrusca genetics

Tyler Bertsch
Foxy aroma.

Al Vybiral
Yeah, that's right.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
So it's always been, other than that year, Brianna on about that third weekend of August, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. La Crosse the next week, Frontenac the week after that, every year, regardless, except for 2012. And so I was done harvesting before the end of August. I think it was that way for pretty much the whole state. But that was a fluke, really. So my harvest timing has not deviated at all since 2008, with the exception of that one year.

Tyler Bertsch
When do you harvest Frontenac?

Al Vybiral
It'd be that first weekend of September.

Tyler Bertsch
And then La Crosse?

Al Vybiral
The weekend before.

Tyler Bertsch
And then Brianna?

Al Vybiral
Weekend... So it's roughly

Tyler Bertsch
So, bang, bang, bang.

Al Vybiral
The third weekend of August, which is easy for me to remember because it's really close to my birthday, and we've harvested on my birthday several times. So it's that third weekend of August, Brianna, always. Next weekend, right at the end of August, La Crosse. So never in September, always that last Saturday, probably in August, is La Crosse, then Frontenac the weekend after that.

Tyler Bertsch
Interesting.

Al Vybiral
Always.

Tyler Bertsch
Of those three varieties, were any of them more susceptible to winter damage or anything?

Al Vybiral
La Crosse. La Crosse, and I even heard that before I planted it. We had some grape growers or some viticulture people come from Iowa. I went to a pruning workshop over there near Council Bluffs, and all the growers around, because they had those Loess Hills wineries there.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
A lot of growers were asking about the bull canes in La Crosse. I see bull canes in all three of my varieties, but La Crosse seems to be the most susceptible. They were talking about, and one of the years prior to harvest, I think Easter that year was around April 19th, and I think it got down to 19 degrees three nights in a row right before that, and the canes just burst. And in the following year, when I went to prune, I just grabbed the trunk and pulled it away from the ground.

So I was like, "Man, people complain about pruning. Pruning's easy." There's nothing to do. But the roots were still alive, so I got a new trunk and a partial cordon in that next growing season. But as I look back later, I had that damage in a few of the Frontenac and a few of the Briannas, too. I didn't really notice that at the time, but almost every La Cross trunk was just blown out.

Tyler Bertsch
Wow!

Al Vybiral
But that was prior to me getting into production, so that was early on. So yeah, that... I remember a discussion about that with La Cross back then.

Tyler Bertsch
Was there any mistakes you made early on that later you paid for, or did you feel you had enough information, you kind of did it right from the start? Or anything you would recommend not doing starting out?

Al Vybiral
Well, I found out in later years that when I put in the-- I bought quality line posts, they're treated and stuff like that, but what I found out is two or three inches below the ground surface and two or three inches above, there's a zone there where that wood rots. Way above it, it's intact, and below ground it's intact. And about five years ago, I had this windstorm in early August, 75 mile an hour winds for 45 minutes, and I went outside the next morning, and I had 16 line posts snap. I mean, those canopies are full, and they just act a sail catching everything. And when I started removing those, I advised the assistant to pull those below-ground sections of those posts. I had them sunk into the ground two feet. And they were brand new right below the ground, but as you got to the ground level

Tyler Bertsch
Where the bugs are eating and all that bacteria.

Al Vybiral
Well, it's just a common

Tyler Bertsch
Weak point?

Al Vybiral
It's a common... There's always stress whenever there's wind and there's canopy. There's stress right there at the joint.
... That's like a pivot point, almost a joint at the ground level. But the wood was rotten, which rotted right there at ground level. So that was really... I'm still recovering from that. Even the big, thick wood on the H brace on the end posts, those rotted, too. So I'm going back in and replacing with metal where I can.

Tyler Bertsch
So how many years do you think they lasted? Twenty?

Al Vybiral
No. Well, from 15 to 20. Yeah. From 2005-
... So right around then.

So I would've gone in with more metal. Not saying that's perfect, because a couple years after that, I went in with real heavy-duty T posts. I mean, they're the heaviest T posts I could find at a hardware store, a tractor supply. Well, I put them back in to replace those line posts that snapped off the ground. Well, it was this last year. Again, early August, got this big windstorm, and I had a full canopy with the Brianna. The other varieties hadn't had hardly any canopy, but 80-mile-an-hour winds for half an hour, and those new T posts, I looked, they're leaning. I said, "Oh, I just bent them in the ground." No, they bent at the surface. So they're probably about ….they're probably about 15 or 20 degrees off center that. What are you going to do? So I

I had practically no damage on the place except for the bent posts. And something weird happened. A couple days later, I saw these little brown spots on the berries. I'm "That's odd," because there was no hail with it. And then it looks bird damage, but there's no peck mark in there. Well, what am I gonna do? I can't do anything. And then by the end of the week, all those berries were shriveled up. I'm just standing up, "Oh, my gosh, what am I gonna do?" So I called Jim Ballard right away. I said, "Jim, here's what I'm looking at," and this is two weeks before harvest. I said, "Jim, here's what the clusters look. I can't bring them to you. They're just not acceptable." And so he said, "Yeah, with that storm, we had the same problem." I forget how many line posts they lost, but they said, "We're just gonna have to abandon our La Cross. We can't harvest our La Cross because the berries just-"

Tyler Bertsch
Theirs, too?

Al Vybiral
" ... Yeah, they got pummeled by the rain." It was raindrops hitting those berries.

Tyler Bertsch
Just the speed

Al Vybiral
It

Tyler Bertsch
-bruising them.

Al Vybiral
And it was heavy rain.

Tyler Bertsch
You're saying it bruised the clusters

Al Vybiral
Yeah

Tyler Bertsch
... flesh? Oh!

Al Vybiral
And he said, "And that's not the first time it's happened to us either."

Tyler Bertsch
On La Crosse?

Al Vybiral
On some of his berries.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
Because this was two weeks before harvest, and the berries are soft. They're squishy. I mean, the brix aren't where you want them to be yet, but they're really soft. If it had happened two weeks earlier, wouldn't have been a problem, because berries at that point are a marble or a rock. But when they're squishy, they're susceptible to bruising, and I never thought I'd heard that... And Jim said it happened to him before on whatever variety, I don't know. And Brianna was going to be the only variety that I harvested last year, because there wasn't enough of the other two to bother with.

And I ... speaking of things I would've done different, it's something to think about, is getting the harvest crews. That is not easy. I would to get a youth group from school or some club. That way, you can write out one check, and it just works out great. But when you get into individuals and people, I found a couple, they quibble over... I say, "All right, you harvested 13 buckets." "No, I harvested 14," just so that. I don't know, that is a challenge for all grape growers, finding a harvest crew. And I got one lined up now. They're good to go. The guy who's the head of the organization is excited about it, and his boss... It's at a school, so it's a youth group at a club at a school. His boss, administration, is supportive and so I have that going for me now, but it's not always that. So that's a huge challenge. I wouldn't say don't plant grapes because of that, but establish a trellis system in mind to do mechanical harvest. And not every trellis, a Geneva double curtain or a Watson. Those are not suitable for mechanical harvester. And don't use wood. I have still a lot of those original posts out there, and they're intact. They're not falling apart. But if I had someone go through with a mechanical harvester, they'd probably break almost all of them. So think about mechanical harvesting when you put in your trellis system, which I didn't at the time. But there weren't any mechanical harvesters in Nebraska at the time, so... who's gonna think about it?

Tyler Bertsch
Right. What pests or diseases gave you the most trouble over the years?

Al Vybiral
I haven't had any problems with diseases. I have a good, evidently, it's been an adequate fungicide program and some insecticides. The Japanese beetle within the last few years has been a real challenge. That can get away from you if you're not careful. But it hasn't caused any

Tyler Bertsch
No other bugs outside of Japanese beetles?

Al Vybiral
No. Well, I worry about this with the grapevine borer, but I've never seen it be a problem on my place.

Tyler Bertsch
Apple twig borer?

Al Vybiral
Same thing. Yeah. It depends if it gets in your apples or gets in your grapes, it's the same thing. I've never seen any damage from it. Some years, the phylloxera, it's not really considered a pest, but one year, I probably didn't spray early enough or didn't spray for it early at all. And Frontenac leaves are really susceptible to it, and I guess it's debatable whether it causes any problems or not, but every leaf on those vines just looked mangled. But that's really only once or twice that's happened. As far as the pest, there was one other.

Tyler Bertsch
Any moths or wasps or

Al Vybiral
No. Oh, I remember what it was. So the first two or three or four years before I got to harvesting, grape-bearing stages, it got to be later in the summer, every year, there was this moth out there, and my vines are still in the grow tubes. I think might even been in that first year. Some moth got out there and practically defoliated a lot of them. I grabbed one of those caterpillars and took it to the entomologist in Lincoln on campus, and it's an eight-spotted forester, and it's just a little moth, kind of a neat-looking moth, and it has several things that it feeds on, and grapes are one of them, and it found them. And it was only a problem for two or three years, and I haven't seen one since.

Tyler Bertsch
What years was that, do you remember?

Al Vybiral
2005, '6, '7.

Tyler Bertsch
Huh.

Al Vybiral
And I haven't seen them since

Tyler Bertsch
Right when you established.

Al Vybiral
Yeah. And I would only see it in late, probably August, was when I'd notice

Tyler Bertsch
Interesting

Al Vybiral
... that they'd be chewing on the leaves. I haven't seen them since. But as far as one that really makes an impact, the Japanese beetle... right now. And the apple twig borer, luckily, I have not seen any damage. Occasionally, I might throw in an insecticide part rarely, just because I'm afraid it might be there, but they're very hard. I've never seen one. They're really hard to see. I don't know how you scout for them, unless you set up a trap or something that.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
Luckily, I haven't seen any. But the biggest problem now has been this trunk disease, stem canker or canker, whatever you wanna call it, Botryosphaeria or Esca. There's two or three fungi out there that cause that, and it's bad. In fact, I brought that to the attention of the plant pathologist in Lincoln several years ago, and Paul arranged to have a little workshop on it.

Tyler Bertsch
I remember Richard Smart came.

Al Vybiral
Yeah, and that's everywhere in the world where grapes are growing. But it gets in a wound, and I would have these gaps. Other things can cause it, but these gaps in the cordon... it's messing up the translocation in the vine. So I've had to do it several times over the years, just cut a vine off, about a foot off the ground and just wait for spurs to establish a new trunk and cordon. I had to do that a lot. That's probably the biggest problem for me. I haven't had hardly any foliar or cluster problems other than with birds occasionally, and they seem to be less of a problem over the years. It varies.

Tyler Bertsch
Do you think it have anything to do with pruning, the tools maybe you use,

Al Vybiral
Well, it's a wound, is what it is.

Tyler Bertsch
As you cut, you're... You know what I mean.

Al Vybiral
Mm-hmm. And I clean the pruners, but

Tyler Bertsch
How do you do that? What do you use to clean them?

Al Vybiral
I use alcohol. So do you dunk it each time, or how do you-

Al Vybiral
Well, I spritz the pruners and let it dry, and I spritz them again. Then I wipe it off with a paper towel, try to wipe off clean any dirt that might be on there. You can use alcohol. If you can use, use Clorox too, but I don't to use bleach, because I just don't handling the stuff. So I use rubbing alcohol. And then also physically... I might even scrub it with soap sometimes if it looks really dirty. But

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah, I mean, what do you do between vines? Do you do that between every vine, or...?

Al Vybiral
No.

Tyler Bertsch
I was gonna say, that's a lot of work.

Al Vybiral
You just can't. I mean, I'll start at the beginning of the season, and I might maybe every day or every other day if I think of it. I guess I'm probably not as... I don't know. What's the word I'm trying to think of? Probably don't do as often as I should.

I'm just not mindful of it enough. But I heard you trying to avoid doing it if there's gonna be a rainy spell. Fritz mentioned it this last weekend or last week. I know that if you have the fungi on the ground, it splashes up. Well, he said that they can splash six feet up.

Tyler Bertsch
Wow!

Al Vybiral
I'd never heard that before. So I'm pruning my cordons at forty-two inches off the ground, the stuff could be airborne too, could just be airborne

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah

Tyler Bertsch
For fungal spray schedule, what are the fungicides you use, and how often do you do it?

Al Vybiral
Well, it goes kind of just if it's really rainy or really humid, I pay attention to that. But early season, I do use Mancozeb and sulfur. And there's a cutoff date. Because there's a sixty-six-day pre-harvest interval, I go out to May 27th, and sixty-six days before that, that's still early August, so a couple weeks before I would harvest typically. But I still don't wanna push it. So I put May 27th as a date to stop using that. And I'm probably gonna look and refine... I don't know if I wanna refine what I use much at all based on what Fritz said. But listening to what he said, I'm gonna take a closer look at what I use, look at those fungicide classes and things that.

It's pretty solid, but I'm just gonna review it. And if it's extremely humid, yeah, I get out there and spray ahead. he's talking about, I spray a couple days before. If it's gonna be really wet, I'll spray anyway, because you can kill or neutralize a lot of those fungi... before you get really humid conditions, which you're gonna have during and right after the rain. If you get a heavy rain, well, I might have to go back out a few days later and within a week, and spray again later on. But if it's dry and windy and there's not a lot of dew, I might go a couple weeks between spraying. So between- anywhere from four to eight times a season. It depends. If it's really dry or wet.

Tyler Bertsch
Do you treat the 3 varieties differently, or do you just treat them all no matter what

Al Vybiral
No, I just go. I just go.

Tyler Bertsch
What do you use? Do you have a small tractor, garden tractor?

Al Vybiral
When I moved back to this area, because I lived out in South Central Nebraska for several years. I worked for an ag retailer out there and for an ag chemical company. But when I moved back here, I was gonna be closer to the farm. I wanted to have equipment to mow and stuff that. So Dad wasn't around. My dad passed away, so I wanted to buy a tractor, small tractor, 33 horse tractor, and a shredder. I wanted those two things for sure. But then one year, it would've been back in that 2008, '07, '08, or something that, with our annual conference, we had a big, pretty good sized trade show with it. So we had vendors there, and there was this guy who always came. He sold these sprayers for vineyards, and I knew I needed to spray, but I didn't know what to use. I didn't wanna use backpack sprayers, some three gallon that go out there with a wand, spray it, but this isn't gonna work. And he had this sprayer, I got the trade show special, special price. I was okay, I'll buy it. Which is really kind of overkill for a one acre vineyard, but it saves so much time. They even make these fancy ones that you put a mister.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
But you still gotta walk up and down each side of the vineyard. Each side, that'd be nearly two miles. Now, I have 4,500 feet of row, so it's close to a mile. So if you walk up and down each side with one of these, a professional backpack sprayer, you're walking nearly two miles. Wearing a Tyvek suit, it'd kill you. So I already had the tractor, which I was going to use anyway, so I dropped a bunch of money for this, and I'm so glad I got it. It does a great job and so yeah, I bought that. It's overkill for an acre, but that's the only way to do it, otherwise your time's worth something, your health's worth something, so you don't croak when you're out. It's hot enough sometimes, it takes me about 15 to 20 minutes sometimes if I don't time it right. If it's during a real hot part of the day, yeah, you're in a Tyvek suit, you just feel horrible.

Tyler Bertsch
Have you had issues with spray drift herbicide?

Al Vybiral
Yes.

Tyler Bertsch
Which ones, do you know?

Al Vybiral
Well, I got some contact drift one time from I don't remember what it was. It was a corn post-emerge herbicide that... Well, it's just carelessness by someone. But other than that, I see 2,4-D and dicamba symptoms every year, probably mostly 2,4-D.

Tyler Bertsch
Is it more or less prevalent on certain varieties?

Al Vybiral
They all show, they all show it equally. I don't think one

Tyler Bertsch
There's none, none of them do better than the other, you don't think?

Al Vybiral
I don't think so, no. Yeah, it's all kind of equally... You just see it on leaves, and I don't... Yeah, one time I could smell 2,4-D, and this was before anything had been planted in the fields, but there was already bud break. I think it had been a real cold spring, but I could smell 2,4-D. I went out driving to try to find where it was. I drove around, not just my section, but the bordering sections. I couldn't see any tractors in the field anywhere, so I don't know where it came from.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah, it can travel pretty far.

Al Vybiral
Yeah, it does.

Tyler Bertsch
Just in your years of growing grapes, have you heard of any varieties that people planted around here that just didn't pan out? I know Chambourcin is one a lot of people planted early that has struggled

Al Vybiral
Yes

Al Vybiral
It's not quite cold hearty enough. Maybe if you get down around Nebraska City and farther south. Makes one fantastic wine. I love Chambourcin.

Tyler Bertsch
Was there any cultivars that were marketed as ... That you heard about, and you thought, "Oh, this will be cool," and it just didn't work out?

Al Vybiral
I shouldn't ... Well, I don't Concord, so I know there's some of that, but it's up really up to the winemaker. I mean, if you're just a grape grower, you plant whatever the winery you sell to wants. Really, doesn't really matter if you like the grape or not. But as far as performance in the vineyard, kind of it's ... Oh, there was one, that one winery made, they made fantastic wine from it, Baco, Baco Noir. But it's just too tender, and they ended up taking out all the vines.

Tyler Bertsch
Where was that at?

Al Vybiral
Lincoln area.

Tyler Bertsch
I had trialed a couple of them in my vineyard, and they're still alive, but don’t look the best,

Al Vybiral
Well. the grower told me that he lost roughly one-fourth. Over time, would lose one-fourth of the vines every year, but it made wonderful wine.

Tyler Bertsch
It's a great wine, yeah.

Al Vybiral
As far as others, I don't know. Again, it makes good wine, but I think maybe Marquette was kind of overpromoted. I don't know. I think it might be kind of challenging

... from winemaking in some aspects, but you can say that about a lot of varieties, not just that one. As far as others, I'm thinking trying to from a longevity, from a survival standpoint, I'm not thinking of any really.

Tyler Bertsch
Did you notice any winter hardiness changes or fruit quality change over the years as the vines aged?

Al Vybiral
Not really. There was one thing, though. 2008 was my first harvest year, and in 2009, so the vines were just five years old. My Brianna, that year, that was a cool growing season, temperature-wise, cool. Was one of the coolest summers in Nebraska history. It was a beautiful summer, and it didn't matter what you planted, corn, soybeans, apples, grapes, everything, yields were just fantastic. And my Brianna, so they were very young, averaged 31 pounds per plant, which is probably about double. because you would want to have consistent yields year after year.

Tyler Bertsch
What do you usually get off Brianna?

Al Vybiral
Oh, it's that's been my bit- it's just been so up and down. It has not been consistently where I want it to be.

But that one year with that really cool summer, yeah, it was every crop out there. It was just beautiful. There was no stress.

Tyler Bertsch
Let me ask you this: have you tasted the wine from your grapes based upon the season? in the cool year, did the wine Brianna taste more pineapple, passion fruit, or did it change based upon the vintage?

Al Vybiral
I couldn't tell you.

Al Vybiral
But I don't know that I could tell them a lot

Tyler Bertsch
It’s like pinning the tail on the donkey

Al Vybiral
It is

Tyler Bertsch
... but I always ask that because I think as a winemaking region, we wanna start to pull that out and understand how the seasons are impacting vintages

Al Vybiral
Yeah

Al Vybiral
Yeah

Tyler Bertsch
... I don't think that's really well documented in our region.

Al Vybiral
Well, that's hard to do because when you think about all the variables... you think about winemaking regions where they know that, they've got it nailed down, think Italy and Germany and what have you, how long have they been growing grapes?

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
And how long have we been growing grapes?

Tyler Bertsch
30 years? That's why I'm trying to help document this stuff.

Al Vybiral
We're not even in the- we're still infants compared to them.

Tyler Bertsch
That's why I'm documenting all this and meeting with people. In world historical terms, New York or Napa Valley, are young but even them, they've been around for decades. Our region is just a baby.

Al Vybiral
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Bertsch
And so I wanna help lay the groundwork and get some of that data out there on all these varieties we have and how they ripen and the flavors they have. And I go to different wineries, and they taste a little different based upon the soil or the temperatures. Marquette up in Minnesota tastes a lot nicer than it does in Nebraska. In my opinion.

Al Vybiral
And you might have to go a couple hundred miles away before you notice that change in vintage.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
So where I grow versus what someone in Columbus grows or someone in... Hastings grows, it may not be a big enough difference. You might have to go to Minnesota

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah

Tyler Bertsch
But I wanna capture that

Al Vybiral
Yeah,

Tyler Bertsch
... because Frontenac might be more red fruit, jammy up north, and down here... it has chocolate flavor sometimes etc

Al Vybiral
Yeah

Tyler Bertsch
I think that stuff's kind of interesting.

Al Vybiral
Well, it does make a difference. I wish I could take credit for saying this, but it was Max McFarland said something to the extent... I can't remember exactly. So you have the cold climate growing world, while here in Nebraska, we're in the sun belt

Tyler Bertsch
Sun, yeah. It's just jam-packed. So the other thing, too, which I'm interested in talking to different breeders, is developing cultivars for our area because in Nebraska specifically, we don't have cultivars that are Nebraskan.

Al Vybiral
No.

Tyler Bertsch
They're Minnesotan or they're old French hybrids, or they came from Missouri.

Al Vybiral
Or New York.

Tyler Bertsch
Or New York, yeah. And the New York ones aren't hardy enough

Al Vybiral
No they are not

Tyler Bertsch
... most of the time. The Minnesota ones ripen too fast and give off, off flavors or they struggle with the heat, but they do the best probably out of all of them, and the old French hybrids have off flavors, or they're not hardy enough. So I think there's a lot of area for improvement, but

Tyler Bertsch
Was there any winters you had that were really damaging, or do you not get much winter damage on your vines?

Al Vybiral
No. Not

Tyler Bertsch
I figured those three varieties are probably pretty tough usually for our winters.

Al Vybiral
Well, spring late frost is what I have to worry about or freezes.

Tyler Bertsch
How often do you think you get damage from late frost damage?

Al Vybiral
I don't. I mean, sometimes I've been seeing that the leaves get singed, but I don't think there's been any bud damage. I've been pretty lucky that way.

Tyler Bertsch
How cold does it have to get, though? Have you monitored that at all, did it get twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one?

Al Vybiral
Yeah, last year, maybe upper twenties and no damage, I've been lucky.

Tyler Bertsch
You still survived it?

Al Vybiral
Yeah. Just that one year, when it was before the barren years, when it got down to nineteen, three years in a row, mid to late April, that one year.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
Other than that, and I wasn't harvesting grapes yet so that wasn't a concern for me.

Tyler Bertsch
Because my next question was gonna be if you knew how fruitful each variety is after it's had frost damage on primary buds... But you wouldn't know that then.

Al Vybiral
I can't really say.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah, okay.

Al Vybiral
I don't have that experience.

Al Vybiral
Well, yeah, I've heard people talk about, "Oh, my gosh, it got hit this bad," and so I don't know. I think in my place, it's really open. I don't have any

Tyler Bertsch
Like a frost pocket or anything?

Al Vybiral
Yeah, I don't have that at all.

Tyler Bertsch
Because you're in kind of flat area in the open.

Al Vybiral
Yeah, and there's always good wind movement through there, so I don't think that's... Yeah, I'm not immune from it, but I've been lucky so far.

Yeah, only one time ever did I see what looked some kind of a mildew or something on a... And I saw a few leaves that looked kind of funky and I'm not even sure which variety it was. And I said, "That's odd." It was still September, and I didn't do anything about it.

Tyler Bertsch
Were they brown spots or?

Al Vybiral
No, just a fuzzy.

Tyler Bertsch
Oh, powdery mildew maybe?

Al Vybiral
Yeah, something that. It wasn't really, oh, these two or three leaves just look horrible. It looked a little bit on one or two leaves, oh, I don't know what that is, so let it go and didn't amount to anything. Yeah, I've never needed to spray post harvest, late season. I haven't had any need to do that.

Tyler Bertsch
There's not a certain fungal pathogen that's impacted you more so than others?

Al Vybiral
Not at all, no.

Tyler Bertsch
Is there any quirks or anything unique about these varieties that people should know about?

Al Vybiral
Well, Lacrosse is extremely thin-skinned. It just gets really juicy, but I'm picking it by hand, so I guess with mechanical harvesters, it's just really

Tyler Bertsch
Might be a problem.

Al Vybiral
It's really beat up, just going through the harvester. I've heard that. But as far as, it's interesting how different the tendril strength is from one variety to the next. Lacrosse is the worst. I mean, when you're going in pruning in the spring, and you wanna pull away some prunings, the tendrils wrapping around the opposite wise, oh, my gosh, it's wire. It's wire.

Tyler Bertsch
On the Lacrosse?

Al Vybiral
Yes, and that's not a reason to grow it or not grow it, but there is a difference in that respect. Well, they're unique. The leaf shapes are different. I just can't think of anything. What's disappointing is that as I understand, birds are hardwired to see something that's red or purple. So think of fruit in nature that's mulberries and wild plums and stuff that. Well, they'll go for white grapes just as much as the red. They seek it out and what I hate, especially with the Brianna, because the berries are bigger than the Lacrosse or the Frontenac, they'll just peck the berry, not eat the whole thing. They'll peck it, [chuckles] and that'll ruin it. But they'll go after the Brianna just as easily as

Tyler Bertsch
Is there a certain Brix level where you notice bird interest

Al Vybiral
When the berries start getting soft, probably till about... So veraison, in my place, starts right at around July 21st every year, or within a few days of that. And so by early August, yeah, there's enough sugar, and the berries are starting, are soft enough that it's appealing to them.

Tyler Bertsch
Do you net, or do you use any decoys, or?

Al Vybiral
I netted one year, and I hated it, and I don't have the help to drape the nets over, so I used the side nets. And deploying it, putting it up wasn't so bad, but taking it down was just a pain. I'll never, ever use it again. I rolled them up and put them up in the rafters in my garage, and the only time I'm gonna take it down ever again will be to get rid of them. It worked so-so, because you couldn't really... You gotta use clips at the top, you clip it, so they don't get in and at the bottom, you can't always get a complete seal, and they can get up in there, you know. So dropped a lot of money on those, and then just to use them one year. Yeah, I put up this noisemaker thing, and the birds that are kites, those jack kites, they help. They help. So I don't know of anything else specifically that works real good. I'm experimenting with these Christmas lights that are actually lasers. You know, they just shoot the green lights on your house. On Christmas, you put them out there, they're pretty, and they rotate. Well, there's

Tyler Bertsch
During the day, they'll work?

Al Vybiral
Yeah, because... Well, see, birds

Tyler Bertsch
They can see it.

Al Vybiral
They see, and there's research on this, birds see... Well, you've seen those laser things?

Tyler Bertsch
Right, that's set up high.

Al Vybiral
And that's green light. And birds, when they see that laser coming, they interpret it as something coming at them, you running at them or a car so they want to get out of the way. And, oh, yeah, it's visible during the day to them.

Al Vybiral
Yeah, sure, they would see it during the day. And yeah, because at night it wouldn't do me any good because birds are roosting at night. They're not out there at night. So yeah, in this pamphlet, I bought this thing at... All these Christmas orange ornaments, you can get half price at Menards right after Christmas. So I bought them. I had the idea to try it, and it says in there, "Do not use this within five miles of an airport," because they're not just really bright lights. They're little lasers. So I tried them a couple of years and mixed results. I'm going to try them again, or I can't say they helped at all.

I had to drag a generator out there and turn it on. I had to run, I put them up on the top of a post and run an electrical cord out to each one of them, but it was really a major pain. So when I try it again, I'm gonna... And I tried to do it for the whole vineyard, which was hard to cover for a little vineyard. So if I'm gonna do it again, I'll use one generator for north half of the vineyard and then get a smaller one for the south half, so I can deploy more of them throughout the vineyard. But you gotta run electrical cord to each one of them. And you can set that on a static display or a rotational display. So it's all these little lights are moving around out there.

Tyler Bertsch
They're the green and red ones?

Al Vybiral
Well, you can set it for green only or red and green.

Al Vybiral
No, I only did it, I've only done it a couple times so far.

Tyler Bertsch
How high up do you put them on the post?

Al Vybiral
Well, my line posts are nine foot tall, so that's as high as I can put them.

Tyler Bertsch
That's interesting. I'm very interested in how that goes. Let me know

Al Vybiral
Yeah

Tyler Bertsch
... because I wanna know. because netting is a lot of work.A  prior grower I interviewed has had luck with the sprays…. the artificial grape spray.

Al Vybiral
Oh, I have some of that. I've used it a couple times. I can't say that it helped or not. I've heard you're talking about that anthranilite.

I got a good deal on it a couple times, kind of a two-for-one type thing, so I bought it, used it. I asked Jim if he was okay with me trying, and he said, "Go ahead," because it's Concord grapes is what it smells like. And supposedly birds hate that. I've used it a couple times, and I can't say that it helped or not, and you don't know unless you do a treated and untreated, and I'm not gonna do that, so

Al Vybiral
So it's interesting. One talk about dealing with birds. I was outside working on my vines. This car pulls in the driveway, and this guy jumps out and just starts asking me all sorts of questions about the grapes and asking me about birds, if birds are a problem. Well, this guy is a... What is it called? A falconer/

Tyler Bertsch
Oh, yep.

Al Vybiral
And he lived in Fremont, and he was trying to get the idea or put it together if it would be economically feasible to get the right type of birds to go out and because in the northwest, where they grow blueberries and stuff like that, they train these birds to go in and chase but not hunt there. And it just, you see flocks of blackbirds or starlings leaving when a hawk comes in. This hawk puts the fear of God into these birds and it works. It just flat out works, in places where they have blueberries and stuff like that. And he was, "Is there are enough grape growers around here?" I was, "Yes, there are," you know. And because I said, "Oh, and there's also a bunch of wineries just across the river there south of Council Bluffs." So he was really interested in it, and told me about, "Well, there's this one, alpamato is the name of the falcon, a South American bird, and they're really expensive, and you gotta have so many of them to make it worth your investment. And there's a risk if you let one loose, there's something bigger in the sky, a red-tailed hawk, that could take them out or something that. So there's a big risk." And plus, there was a lot of pushback in the falconer community in Nebraska, because you'd be using those birds for business, for profit. Most of them are: "No, no, that's," they're purists, they just wanna raise them and release them and let them exercise them every day or something that. But this guy was really interested in... I tried to encourage him, "Yeah, do it. Do it."

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah, I know in California and up in the West Coast generally they use them a lot.

Al Vybiral
Oh, yeah.

Tyler Bertsch
So that would've been cool. I looked into it, and you have to have a lot of licensing and stuff to be a falconer.

Al Vybiral
And those things are …you gotta exercise them three or four times a week.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
It's a permanent commitment to them. It's not a dog you can take to the pound and have it boarded  for a couple weeks and leave. You can't do that with them.

Tyler Bertsch
Before you planted the vines, I forgot to ask this in the beginning, sorry. What was the land?

Al Vybiral
It had been corn and soybean rotation.

Tyler Bertsch
It was corn and soybeans?

Al Vybiral
So it's just a little acre and a half, southwest of the house, or south of the house, right on an intersection, and been corn, wheat, soybeans forever.

Tyler Bertsch
Did you have any problems with soil nutrition or vigor?

Al Vybiral
Well, it's extremely vigorous, and I did the soil testing beforehand. The only thing I had to correct was for pH. And the tenant, he's really good about it, so I said, "I'm gonna plant grapes here." So then the next year, that growing season, he only uses post-emergent products. He didn't put down anything pre- to deal with any runover, longevity for the next year for the roots. So he was really conscientious about that. But I did a soil test, and I knew how much lime was needed to correct it, and the only thing the local co-op had was pell lime, which is too expensive, but I'm only using it on an acre or acre and a half. And they only had about 70% of what I needed for the whole area, but I still, that'll do, if that's all you have because it was in the spring, and they try to run out of it. They don't want a bunch of pile of lime sitting around. It's expensive to store it, not use it. And so my pH was 5.5 plus or minus a tenth unit. That was corrected up to seven, which is a little too much.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
And that was back, it would've been 2005. That pH has not budged. It's still at seven, so

Tyler Bertsch
The grapes have taken it, fine?

Al Vybiral
Yeah. It is what it is, and I take soil samples about once every four years or so, and the only recommendation that comes back is for sixty pounds of nitrogen, which I've rarely done. Absolutely, they're so vigorous.

Tyler Bertsch
How do you fertilize? Or do you

Al Vybiral
Well, the times that I did, I just went out there. I got some lawn fertilizer that was twenty-four six or something like that, and I went out there with a cup, and I just sprinkled it between each vine. When I got done, I calculated it up, I'd only put out about 20 pounds of actual N for the whole acre. That's distributed amongst five hundred and forty plants, that's next to nothing. So the nitrogen, there's no nitrogen deficiency out there. There's no deficiency of any nutrient out there. It either comes back rated high or very high, the potassium is really high. And I do a complete soil test, all nutrients, the most extensive soil test that they offer, so nothing's deficient, so it's a very fertile site.

Tyler Bertsch
Nice. Herbicides, what do you use underneath the canopy?

Al Vybiral
Well, I've tried to use Roundup, and it just doesn't work because what I have so much of is brome grass, and it's hard to kill during the growing season. I asked a guy who's an apple grower, I said, "I've had this apple tree for years, and it's just not producing any apples." He said, "Well, it shouldn't be any problems unless you planted it in brome grass because it's so competitive." And that's what I did. So it was during the summer, June or July, I went out, and I sprayed a ten foot around this apple tree, and some brome grass killed that, or it all died back. Two weeks later, it was green as a gourd.

You can't kill brome grass during the growing season. And then there's so much growth out there, once the growing season is over, I don't wanna use Roundup or glyphosate and get any absorption because you can see leaf deformation or you can see symptoms the next year. And lots of times, in October, you get a killing frost, so it's a good time to go out there and do that because there's no foliage on the vines. But I'm on vacation. And by the time I get home, it's twenty degrees for the high for the day, so I miss my window, and that's my own fault.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
Over the years, I think my bird pressure has gotten less. It was really bad in the early years. I don't know why, but I have one theory that doesn't always pan out, but my logic is, if you have a real wet spring, which we all want moisture during the growing season, then there's more mulberries and things that, that take pressure off your grapes. But even during those drought years, I didn't think that the bird pressure was any worse.

Tyler Bertsch
I didn't have bird pressure in drought years

Al Vybiral
Yeah, I don't know

Al Vybiral
I don't think that you're taking care of your grapes, you're gonna have grapes, and other things are scarce. You would think it would be worse on grapes, but it's just weird. I can't explain it. Just an observation.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah. Do you spur train your

Al Vybiral
Yeah.

Tyler Bertsch
How many buds do you leave per spur on each variety?

Al Vybiral
Well, here's what I'm doing. I tried to leave a four-foot-long cordon. I could get that much growth in a year. So if I'm just starting from a shoot, one shoot, and I would leave a cordon about as wide as this table. And I just, if I prune it at the end of four feet, because I have eight feet between vines, so I have two trunks, double trunk system. And I always get these shoots at the end of the cordon and these blanks up in the middle. It was like that for years, and I thought it's because of the trunk canker.

My trunk comes up, my cordon wire is at forty-two inches, and it goes horizontal. I try to go both ways. I wouldn't get shoots until the very end of the cordon. I might even only have one shoot in the cordon, and that thing could grow ten, twenty, thirty feet in a year.

Al Vybiral
And at this part here midle these are all blank here. And well, it's because of the apical dominance, which is on the end of the vine. But when you cut away, if you make a shorter cordon, you shove that apical dominance towards this region, where you transition from trunk cordon at that bend. And so when you're starting a new cordon, cut it to fifteen inches. I'm in that stage right now with a lot of my vines, because I had to cut them off because of the trunk canker. Now, with last year, I finally got some rain, so I got trunk and cordon. So I'm cutting it from here to here, that's fifteen inches, when I'm out there pruning, and you just leave those however many buds there are, so that apical dominance, which was out at four feet, is now here closer to the trunk. So this is the apical region now, rather than out there. I just had all these blank buds for years, and it wasn't just me. And so then, year one, this is your cordon. But then you take the next one, this last one, and trim it down another 15 inches for year two, and then the third year, you finish out that four-foot long. So after three years, your cordon has three different ages of wood, but you work off of the spurs off of each-

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah

Al Vybiral
... one of those sections. So I just-

Tyler Bertsch
I can see the downside the first year, though. If they're at 15, you're probably losing some buds.

Al Vybiral
No.

Tyler Bertsch
No?

Al Vybiral
Well, if I went out to four feet, there could be no buds there.

Tyler Bertsch
Oh, okay.

Al Vybiral
It was that bad.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
I could have several blanks here, and I asked a professional viticulturist. I said, "Say in a four-foot long trunk, how many blank spurs or blank nodes, blank buds, spaces, would you tolerate before you replace that cordon?" I said, "I wouldn't tolerate any." because if you would leave eight nodes or buds in that space, if you lose one, if you have one space that's not productive, well, that's a 12% loss.

Tyler Bertsch
Oh, yeah.

Al Vybiral
And so I wouldn't tolerate any. I'd establish a new cordon. And I was having, over the years, I have this beautiful first-year cordon, and I'm having all sorts of blanks on it, especially toward the end. Towards the apex, that's where I would have the most leafy growth, but half the cordon could be blank. And when-

Tyler Bertsch
So the next year you'd train a new cane underneath, and then that's where you'd cut that at 15 inches and get rid of the whole cordon, the old cordon?

Al Vybiral
Yeah, if that's the case.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
But I'm at the point now where I had so many plants that I cut off a foot off the ground, that if I got good rain last year, I had good growth for a new trunk and new cordon. I'm gonna be doing that a lot this year, of starting with a 15-inch cordon. Or in some of my Brianna, some of those I might be able to get a 15-inch from this last year, then another 15. It all depends. I won't know until I go out and start pruning.

Tyler Bertsch
But each spur, what do you leave for the buds per spur on each variety?

Al Vybiral
Two.

Tyler Bertsch
Okay.

Tyler Bertsch
Last couple questions, what do you think people misunderstand about cold climate or prairie grapes?

Al Vybiral
Well, I don't know. First of all, people don't even know that grapes are grown in Nebraska. You can still run into people that don't know that there's even wineries in Nebraska. "There's wineries or grapes in Nebraska?" There's wineries in all 50 states, so yes, there are wineries and grapes grown in Nebraska. But people have just been sold on California, and Italy, and France. "If you don't drink these wines, you're not the cool kid. You have to drink Cabs and Merlots, and you have to, have to, have to." And it works for them to promote their product, but people get intimidated by wine in the first part because of wine snobs, and they also... I'll try any type of wine. I don't care what the grape is. But people are, "Oh, that's different. I don't know what that is. I shouldn't try that." I don't know why they get that mindset. I don't know how that happens or how you overcome it. And I don't know that any other beverage has that problem. I don't think beer has that problem.

Tyler Bertsch
No.

Al Vybiral
Well, some people might just drink some standard big brand American lager and don't ever wanna try anything else. And it's almost they're afraid to try something different. Try this-

Tyler Bertsch
They're missing out on a lot of different flavors that we offer that no other place has.

Al Vybiral
Even for beer, I don't wanna talk, "Try this hefeweizen from Germany." "No, I don't know what it is." Or, "Do you wanna try this Frontenac or this La Crosse or this whatever grown in Nebraska or any other state around here?"  You'll get people coming into wineries who love it, and they have fun, and they get familiar with the Edelweiss and all this stuff. They're okay with it. But if someone's been to some of these major grape-growing regions, I think they get a little brainwashed. And that's why it's something I can't get my head around, why people are afraid. It's they just, "I won't try anything different," which I don't get.

Tyler Bertsch
Do you think our grapes will ever compete with the rest of the states, and on what terms? How would they compete, I guess? Do you think we have a niche or-

Al Vybiral
Well, compete with other states. What do you mean, what other states? Which states?

Tyler Bertsch
Just at that level, we'll get to where we have wines that are at... I don't wanna say we're not trying to be Napa Valley, or we're not trying to be Willamette Valley, or however you pronounce that, Oregon.

Al Vybiral
Yeah.

Tyler Bertsch
But I'm saying a quality-

Tyler Bertsch
... wines of our own character, not mimicking what they do-

Al Vybiral
Right.

Tyler Bertsch
-but at that quality level. Do you think we'll get to that, or-

Al Vybiral
Well, we have that quality-

Tyler Bertsch
Do you think we are at that?

Al Vybiral
We have that quality now. But that one winemaker who made the Baco Noir, which happened to be dry, told me that was a double gold-winning wine, but it just didn't move because for one thing, it was dry and not sweet. And it's trying to get people to experiment with something even out of their own taste bud range, the dry versus sweet. I think we're already there and we don't wanna be Napa. I don't like hearing Nebraska compared to Napa. I don't like using that analogy

Al Vybiral
I don't like mentioning California or France or whatever. People say, "I want something that's a..." I would not compare a Nebraska wine to a Cab or a Merlot or something. I would describe its qualities, but I'm not gonna compare it. I don't wanna use any of those vinifera terms. I just don't want to. Of course, if someone else brings it up, "I like this," "Well, you might try that," but I don't even wanna mention... I don't like-

Tyler Bertsch
Right.

Al Vybiral
Well, for that matter, the rest of the country can't, because California produces 90% of the wine in the United States.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
So you can't use that. But I think we're there as far as quality goes. We just need, there's educational resources available if people want to find them. It's not like the old days when I first started going to winery grape grower conferences back to 2003, '04, '05, we had our winery grape grower conference out at Kearney. We got 300 people show up there.

Al Vybiral
They have this cold climate conference. It's huge. They've scaled back. Now, they just offer that every other year, I think, because the attendance, the interest just isn't there.

Tyler Bertsch
It's not as novel as it used to be.

Al Vybiral
Yeah. None of it is. None of it is really as novel as it used to be, but those education opportunities are there if people wanna look for it. But like the neighboring states, we're all, the novelty's kind of worn off.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah. Last question: What are you most proud of from your years of growing grapes?

Al Vybiral
Oh, that I've hung with it. And probably I'm really grateful for the relationships I made and the relationship I made with the winery that I sell to. Well, I learned some new things about herbicides, so I can do some better things. I might start trying some tillage to make the appearance of the vineyard better, and I have rebuilding to do with trellises that have been damaged. I gotta make it look better. But I guess the proudest thing is that I've stuck with it. People, "Oh, this guy grows grapes."  And I didn't do it to stand out or anything like that. People, "Oh, this guy grows grapes." So I know I've learned a lot about wine. I've gotten interested in the winemaking aspect of it as grape growing over the last several years. That's one thing that surprised me is just after a couple of years, hearing people talk about wine, the aromas and the palate and stuff like that. I really got interested in the grape growing or with the winemaking, and I didn't realize it was happening. So at these conferences, I go to the winemaking seminars as much as the viticulture ones.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
Maybe even more so, because I'm really intrigued by the chemistry, what happens in fermentation. But I still seek out the workshops and stuff like that about grape growing. I look forward to those. But I dabbled with making wine at home. Got some awards at state fair over the years. So yeah, I don't know, that I've hung in there, hung with it, and I wanna do better.

Tyler Bertsch
Yeah.

Al Vybiral
I wanna do better in the future.

Tyler Bertsch
Well, I appreciate the conversation Al.

Al Vybiral
Oh, yeah, it's been fun.

Tyler Bertsch
Thank you for taking the time.

Al Vybiral
No Problem