Budbreak in the Vineyard

The Mudd Vineyard Crew from Long Island planted our vines on Monday, May 20th, finishing up on Wednesday, May 22nd. We were so exhausted (just watching, basically), that we didn't do much of anything after they left on Wednesday. We did walk a bit of the vineyard on Thursday and Friday. When we did some weeding on Friday, we noticed that we were having some budbreak! We were helped by the rain that fell on Thursday evening into Friday morning. I remember when we first met Charles Massoud of Paumanok, he said that in all of his 28 years in the business, no two years were alike and that Mother Nature trumps everything. So far, we have been looked upon kindly by Mother Nature. Our spring was dry and cool, keeping the weeds at bay. Although the days that the Mudd Vineyard Crew were planting, it did warm up to near 80 degrees, fortunately for us, we got some needed rain a few days later. It has been very cool with night time temperatures dipping into the 40s on Saturday and Sunday. The vines, however, are resilient and when we walked the vineyard on Sunday, more vines were saying hello to growing in Connecticut. The above photo is Chenin blanc in budbreak.