What happened to Winter?
Second week of March and temperatures in the County have been floating well over 10C (with a couple of days in the mid teens with bright sunshine). First week of March wasn’t very different. The snow has been gone for weeks and the ground is dry. A few snowfalls this winter, but nothing stuck around. A few cold nights, but no deep freeze. February was warm, March is warmer. County vineyards might have made it through this winter without any vine protection.
Complete opposite of the Okanagan in BC where a January deep freeze below -25C has pretty much decimated the 2024 vintage, and potentially a lot of vines with it. They don’t protect vines in winter there, but twice in 3 years (2022 deep freeze was bad too) may have vineyard managers flocking to the County to learn what is being done here.
One of the County wineries posted the Instagram picture below this week of a budding grapevine. Your intuition may say “great, nice early start to an extended growing season”. Well maybe. But I know from my rounds over the last 2 weeks that most of the vineyard managers and owners are on guard. We still have over 2 months of potential frost events ahead, and many of those could be extended over several days. Early next week the forecast is for -10C nights. Any little buds that are out already are not going to be happy about that. And buried vines waiting to be uncovered are going to be at far greater risk of bud rot if we get some big spring rains. This may be a spring that convinces some holdback vineyards to go to geotextile covers (even if it was a warm winter where no protection would have been necessary). You can peel a geotextile cover back in this warmth to keep some cool air flowing at night, and then cover the vines again in a frost event. You don’t have that benefit if the canes sit under a foot of soil. A frost fan could be a vineyard necessity this spring.
Lack of snow pack is the other big risk. We’re not out of March and already everything is drying out here. There’s no snow pack runoff coming later. We’re going to need the spring rains to avoid some serious summer drought, but that’s a Catch 22 if your vines are buried and starting to bud. Don’t think farming grapes here is easy, and we’re in uncharted territory in terms of how to deal with a winter and spring like this. When to pull the vines out of their covering? How to prepare for a multi night frost event with your vines fully budding and your vineyard crew not here yet? That’s what’s on everyone’s mind right now.
So many risks ahead, and we need only look to recent vintages in France where this early spring warmth potentially results in disaster if any normal spring weather sets in.
