A personal perpsective of life in our Virginia vineyard... Christine Wells Vrooman

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4/05/2012

And Now, An UNWELCOMED Guest

What a difference one month makes!  My last post of precisely one month ago today spoke of an unexpected guest.. a beautiful snowfall on the mountain and vineyard.  Here is an image of the vineyard one month ago today...



And here, my friends, is the vineyard this week.. in full bud-burst, on its way to bloom! 

 
The Chardonnay had budbreak on March 19 and the Pinot followed four days later.. a record by a long-stretch.  Which is fine... unless.... an Arctic air mass swoops down and drops us below freezing and attempts to freeze our tender fruit and buds.  That would not be a good thing.  The forecasters are predicting such an event tomorrow night when temps are supposed to drop to around 30 degrees by daybreak Saturday.  We will monitor it closely and if it looks certain, we are going to have to come up with some plan to protect them.. not an easy task.  Agriculture can be very humbling indeed.

We will see what tomorrow night brings.  Stay tuned.

And frigid air masses are not the only chilly things around here.  Our Chardonnay has been removed from the barrels and now sits in an ice cold stainless steel tank. This is called cold-stabilization  I'll go into the purpose of that later, but here is a pic of our iced over tank full of last years fruit.. our 2011 vintage Chardonnay.. one step closer to getting into the bottle, and then into your glass!


On a warmer note, how I love these two precious freckled faces (Quinn and Owen, our future vintners!) as they examine a newborn Chardonnay shoot!

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