This week we noticed bud break in the vineyard, random little green flags waving in the rows among the pop-corning buds. Our super warm winter has encouraged this to happen a full month before it happened in 2014 and a month-and-a-half before it happened in 2013. They would stress us out if we allowed ourselves to become stressed by the whims of Mother Nature. Fortunately, our new vineyard manager Jim Pratt and his team at Cornerstone Certified Vineyard will be out this week to prune, which will delay the growth of the tender shoots during this dangerous, frost-prone time.
With the heat that has come sooner and sooner every year, we’ve started joking that we may be harvesting in July. However, we don’t know how much longer this will be something to laugh at for our cool-weather-inclined Pinot Noir fruit.
