From Promise To Trouble
This year we have had some pretty extreme weather to date. Things looked pretty great from harvest through February. Then conditions changed, in ways that will go a long way to defining the quality and quantity of wines produced from the North Coast in 2008.The weather creating the 2008 vintage here in Sonoma started out with real promise. After harvest we had less than an inch of rain in November, another 5.5 inches in December, a relatively wet January with 14 inches, and then another 5 inches in February. And the temperatures were properly cold - no 100° F weather in February for a change - pushing the vines into a needed slumber.
Then it got dry. We received less than a quarter-inch of rain in March, and April looks like it will be the same. I am pretty stoked about this - I sure don't want another jungle vintage like 2006, where 14 inches of rain in March-April brought us to 50 inches for the season, and warm temperatures overgrew the vines and clusters. Made for a lot of work.
With less water in the soil profile early in the 2008 season I hope canopy growth will be moderate and berry size small - two factors contributing to higher quality.
Temperatures in February and March mostly stayed cooler than "normal", and the vines woke up slowly. But wake up they did, and at vineyards across the North Coast we saw the tender little leaves and tiny grape clusters emerging from their wooly buds.
And then the trouble - frost nights started. A succession of cold and dry weather fronts dropped temperatures and dew points into the mid- to high-20's One acquaintance was out in the vineyard to fire up the frost protection in the wee hours 13 out of 25 nights in March-April. That's a lot. Guys who have been doing this long enough to recall say that this has been the most active frost season in over 30 years.
Word is out that the North Coast experienced a crippling frost last Sunday night/Monday morning. All around me I see vineyards with shoots that look like month-old celery from the back of the fridge. Some of these vineyards had no frost control. More heartbreaking, some experienced frost control equipment failures in those critical hours when the irreparable damage was done. And now it looks like we could be in for more frosty conditions in the next week.
Our Annadel Estate Vineyard has frost control. But we don't have power to run it (yet). Because of this I have been deliberately pruning late. This year I pruned even later than usual - we started this past Friday. The new green shoots at the tops of last year's canes got badly scorched by Monday's frost. But because the vines were putting energy into these shoots, the "productive" buds on the canes - the ones low on the cane that we prune back to and expect to give us a crop for the year - were still at the woolly stage. Somewhat protected. We hope. We will see.
On a happier note, I just got back from launching Westwood in Arizona with our new distributor, Integris Wines. Thanks Steve and Todd for putting together one of the most productive brand introductions I have ever been a part of.
I'm also happy to be moving forward with the State of Pennsylvania to introduce Westwood to their state store distribution system.
A post a month is pretty lame, even for me. I promise to try to do better.
posted 4/27/2008 07:01:00 PM
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