Hello and
Welcome!
This is the
combined climate update for April and May 2011.
Well if you live
here in Ecotopia, you know April and May have just been intolerable. If you live
somewhere other than here, we hope you have been enjoying the Spring and early
Summer. We have had several "grumpy farmer days" and are still awaiting
ours.
But looking out
into the vineyard today as I write this, I am encouraged to persevere. I see a
beautifully sunny blue sky with a temperature all the way up to 53 degrees! The
vines have sauntered out of there long winters nap and have begun the task of
creating new shoots and leaves. Each morning they await the warm embrace of
sunrise. That is because, unlike the rest of us, they don't drink
coffee.
In farming the one
thing we can count on is not being able to count on the weather. But we
formulate our plans and strategies hoping for the best and expecting the worse.
As someone once said "Cheer up it could be worse. So I cheered up and it got
worse."
The early
season vineyard work primarily consists of getting the vines ready for their big
day - Bud Break. Ernie does the cover crop recycling every
year to provide nourishment for our vines. The vines themselves also need a bit
of cleaning up. The specific tasks are pruning back last year's growth and tying
the remaining canes down to the fruiting wire, which by the way, is a clean 30
inches above grade.
This is important
to know when calculating the cubic foot capacity of our "solar leaf array." In
cool growing seasons, like all of them since 2006, we don't ask a lot from our
canopy, we require it! Think about the futuristic film the Matrix, where humans
are referred to as batteries i.e. "Copper Tops." They are a power source used to
serve a machine controlled planet. You can also think taxpayers and government,
but I digress.
Right. So each
leaf on a vine is a contributor of energy to that vine's ultimate purpose - to
reproduce by ripening grape seeds. The more leaves that are exposed to what
little sunshine we receive increase the energy available to the vine. During the
day, the leaves create and store energy as the plant can only translocate it out
of the leaves slowly. However, this is temperature dependent. Below 50 degrees,
the plants vascular system does very little translocation of energy from the
leaves to the vine. This means that when it is cold at night, or during
the day, the vine cannot fully "discharge" the leaves. The result is the next
morning the leaves have a diminished capacity to create energy from the
photosynthesis because they have no more storage capacity. The concept is
similar to drinking beer at a BBQ (only so much storage capacity,) which is an
exercise we leave to the reader.
The teachable
moment here, (actually 4 years worth) is that we want as many exposed leaves as
we can grow. This is the primer for the advanced, hands-on canopy management
course here this Summer. We also are taking up loads of CO2 which makes everyone
happy. So are we behind, and if so, what does that mean to the 2010 vintage wine
quality?
Well let's look
into the vineyard for that answer. We declared Bud Break on May 5th this year.
Does anyone know another vintage that was declared so late? How about 2008?
That's right! We declared bud Break on May 5th in 2008. The press loves the
2008s so we've got that going for us, and that is nice. Another pertinent fact
is that we finished harvesting our Pinot Noir on October 31 in 2008, and it was
a beautiful day.
Now, let's look at
the numbers, such as they are.
We have recorded
about 37.61 degree days from April 1 through May 31. This is about on track for
2010 when we recorded 85 degree days, but significantly less than the 200+/-
degree days for the same period in 2007 thru 2009. Rainfall for the 2 month
period was 7.71 inches compared with 7.96 inches in 2010. A "Dog Nose" kind of
Spring - cold and wet.
The month of April
accumulated ZERO degree days, had a high of 80.5 and a low of 32.4 with 4.75
inches of rain scattered throughout the month. The average monthly humidity was
75.31% and the average dew point was 38.62 degrees. Yeah, Ernie got a new
weather station for Christmas.
The month of May
accumulated 37.61 degree days, had a high of 77.6 and a low of 35.3 with 2.96
inches of the liquid form of sunshine. The average monthly humidity was 72.97%
and the average dew point was 43.24 degrees. It looks dryer and warmer than
April, but it didn't feel that way.
We are counting the
days as we await bloom and (hopefully) an economically viable fruit set. For
once we see bloom, we can lock in all of our fears for a protracted and
potentially devastating media portrayal of our harvest. We need 105 days from
bloom through harvest to achieve nice Oregon flavors and aromas in our Estate
Grown wines. Once bloom happens, we feel a call to action and a sense or urgency
that will focus the mind and create a natural prioritization of events. We also
mark the calendar and imagine the most beautiful month of October that we
can.
All the
best,
Ernie
