Re:Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” proj...
by nonick on Wednesday February 03, 2021 @02:47AM
(#26011514)
I have never heard of this grape variety before, now I read this and the next thing I see is Lidl's next week's wine offer for St. Laurent/Spätburgunder wine. I will give it a try!
Re:Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” proj...
by dejv on Wednesday February 03, 2021 @03:20AM
(#26011680)
It is definitely a niche varietal, planted area is still shrinking, especially in my home of Czech republic where it was most planted red grape varietal, but there is growing interest among high end growers in Austria so I think the varietal has some future among wine geeks.
Re:Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” proj...
by abendy on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @10:34AM
(#26002124)
I love this. Are you using any techniques facilitated by tech?
Re:Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” proj...
by dejv on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @10:41AM
(#26002250)
Of course! I do hang NFC tags around preselected vines and I did wrote small iOS app that after scanning the tag I am able to attach photos, labels or other metadata that are interesting from breeder perspecitve. I am also able to track lineages and compare the stability of attributes I am interested in.
Most other breeders use pen and paper and they are fine, but hey I am programmer and I am going to write software.
Thanks to cultivation dificulties as well as bad image from previous times (thanks to big yields it use to be used for poducing cheap table wines) make this varietal slowly dying: old blocks are being replanted by other varietals.
I think it is a pitty as St. Laurent wine is very interesting and quite memorable. Luckily I've bought few blocks with old vines and I am selecting plants with loose bunches and am trying to create new clone with more favorable growing characteristic.