Chardonnay in Bloom

It is getting to that time of the season when the infloresence (flowers) on our varieties begin to bloom. In looking at our chart of the annual cycle of growth, we should be expecting bloom to begin any time now. In fact, when we went to the vineyard on Wednesday, June 15, our Chardonnay was beginning to bloom.

Bloom begins at the north end of our vineyard where it appears to be sunnier and then proceeds to the south end of our vineyard. When we went to the vineyard yesterday, more of the infloresence on the Chardonnay was in bloom. I would guess that it was about 40% in bloom. Not only that, the summer laterals on the Chardonnay were also beginning to leaf out.

Last year, we expected to see an increase in the weight of our varieties but we were quite surprised when all of our varieties with the exception of Chardonnay, came in at approximately the same weight or much lower. (Statistics for Our Varieties from 2019-2021)
We postulated that since our Chardonnay bloomed 5 days earlier than our other varieties, the Chardonnay escaped a weather event that was somewhat detrimental to the Auxerrois, Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Barbera.
So in an effort to more precisely document what is happening this year, I hope to keep track of the weather conditions at bloom.
For this year's Chardonnay, yesterday we believe that the infloresence was at 40% bloom. At 4 a.m. in the morning there was a brief but heavy rainfall which may affect fruitset.
I hope that these notes will show a correlation between the weather events and the amount/weight of the varieties at harvest. Fortunately, there is a long stretch of good weather coming up.