The 2006 breeding/growing season brought more great news for the Sweet Briar wild vines grrape breeding project. First, the original Wild Foxy Vixen bloomed and fruited at both the SBCG annex vineyard and at Chateau Z. It once again showed it's cordifolia-like foliage texture, growth habit, cluster size/shape, and berry adherence blended with labrusca flavor, shoot lie hairs, and leaf shape. Even more exciting was the first fruit produced by the seedlings of the Wild Foxy Vixen that I planted in 2003 from seed collected from the original Wild Foxy Vixen in 2002. Four of the seedlings fruited and the flavor and acid content is remarkable. The foxiness is gone, but the acidity remained low. The fruit is tough and suffered no bird predation at harvest October 10. Black rot was minimal as well under no spray conditions. These seedlings will be very important in developing wine grapes based on Sweet Briar's native vines. No hybrids were made at SBC in 2006, but one cross on the Wild Foxy Vixen at Chateau Z was successful and produced two(!) seeds: Wild Foxy Vixen X Edelweiss. This should be interesting if the seed grows.

News of the 2003 hybrids with the Back Gate cordifolia (BGC) is that all seven seedlings bloomed and bore fruit. The 03-1-1 BGC X Cabernet Sauvignon is female and the 03-1-2 and 03-1-3 of the same cross are self-fertile. All three have similar fruit with small berries, moderate acidity, late ripening, high solids, and great Cabernet green pepper aroma. These vines only made a few small clusters in this, their first fruiting year. The 03-2 cross was BGC X Chambourcin and the four seedlings each made fruit and are all self-fertile. The 03-2-2 made a few small clusters like the Cabernet cross seddlings, but the other three Chambourcin hybrids made a medium crop of beautiful medium-size clusters with small to medium berries. Acidity on the 03-2-1, which ripened first droped to 1.3% which is a huge change from the 5% of the mother cordifolia. The fruit is neutral in flavor and very high solids to 25%. Color is dark Burgundy. These grapes can be used for wine as-is, but further hybridization will easily bring the chemistry into normal wine grape range.

The 2004 hybrids with the Feeding Shed #1 and #2 (FS1, FS2) male cordifolias made superb progress this year and one of the 04-3 female seedlings (Aurore X FS2) bore fruit! It was small berry size with juvenile cluster size. The solids got to 25% and the acidity was dropping well. Flavor was ameliorated cordifolia and getting rich. Next year will bring a great deal more news about the 2004 seedlings which include many Seyval X FS1 seedlings and hybrids of Herb Fritzke's St. Paul, MN, low acidity riparias with FS1.

As of this update I will be moving to my online blog to post news. Please make a link to: http://chateau-z.blogspot.com/ where you can read all the latest news on my vineyard and grape breeding activities.

Thanks! C.Ambers