Phew! is all that I can say about this year. It began with a frost event in the early morning hours on February 4. At 1:30 a.m. the temperature went to -5 oF and steadily declined until it reached a low temperature of -9.5 oF at 7:00 a.m.! This event killed many of our primary buds in the vineyard. But the second blow came on May 18 when there was a frost event that killed most of the growing shoots in the south end of our vineyard.
This was our first experience with a frost event in mid-May and we were unsure how to handle the growing shoots which were now frost bitten. Fortunately, we decided not to touch the south end of the vineyard and focussed our attention on the north end of the vineyard that appeared to have survived. The north end required disbudding and shoot removal which we did for the rest of May. We then turned our attention to the south end to remove the dead shoots. This took about one week. There were a few flower buds here and there on the south end of the vineyard, but the majority of the flowers were at the north end of the vineyard. In June and July the shoots had their grand growth phase and it surprised us that even though the shoots came from what was probably secondary and some tertiary buds, they were quite vigorous! We attributed the vigor to the lack of fruit that would have kept the shoot's vigor in check.
For the rest of the summer, we were busy removing excess shoots, shoot tucking, and hedging. Fortunately, we had help from our 14 year old granddaughter who learned how to drive our John Deere lawn mower adapted to pull a cart into which we put the countless trimmings for her to take to the compost pile. Our friends and their families also came to help us.
Although we knew that our harvest would be small, we took care of the vineyard and whatever fruit was there to nurture. We did have a modest amount of fruit for each of the varieties. Jonathan Edwards and his people helped us with the pressing of the Chenin Blanc and the destemming of our red varieties. The beauty of having a manageable amount of juice was that we were able to ferment all of the harvest in our industrial facility!
2023 marks the 10th year since we first planted our vineyard and although in some ways the time has flown by, in other ways, it does take 10 years to comply with the Federal, State and local laws in order to be able to sell wine.
You can see all of the vintage notes which appears under the tab here: Vintage Notes
Wishing you all a very Prosperous and Happy New Year!
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