My Slow Start

Sorry to get such a slow start on my blog. Celia set it up for me and then told me that I had to write profound enological thoughts down for you to read. The last couple of weeks haven’t been terribly profound I guess. I will do better.

So in the wine biz, springtime has most definitively sprung—and what a spring it has been!

Each spring we have a “frost season”. This is the time between when the buds of the vines swell and start to grow and the time when there is no chance that we will have any further temperatures below 32 degrees. In most areas here in the California’s North Coast frost season runs from late March until early May. Some areas are colder than others, vineyards in hollows tend to get more frost than those on slopes…but growers get to know their vineyards and where there are problems. Cold air is an interesting thing…it behaves exactly like water…it flows downhill to low spots and gets stopped by any little dams that are around—sometimes just a bush or a tree will be enough of an impedance to the free flow of the air to cause a tiny cold spot—just enough to freeze a couple of vines. Since cold air is fairly predictable, growers know where they will have to address frost.

To prevent the vines from freezing (and thus killing off the leaves and flower-buds) grape growers have a few options:

-- Most common are fans---great huge fans attached to big motors, sometimes electric, but more often either old V-8s or radial aircraft engines. (Too often with no mufflers!) The fans work because there is generally a layer of slightly warmer air just a few feet above the vineyard (except on clear starry nights) and they stir the warm air with the cold. Pluses of fans are that they don’t need water; minuses are that they don’t work on clear nights, use a lot of fuel and are fairly expensive to install.

--Next most common are overhead sprinklers. The idea behind these is that as long as there is water actively in the process of freezing, the temperature of the flower-bud will not go below 32 degrees (the grapes freeze at 31, not 32). (Think back to “heat of condensation” etc…from high school chemistry or physics.) Sprinkling works really well, but the downside is that it uses an amazing amount of water…something that is chronically short supply here in California …. About 50 gallons per acre per minute!!!

--Beyond these two methods there are a couple of more “natural” methods of frost control:
-Late pruning usually will stop the vine from growing for a couple of extra weeks, which in many areas is all it takes to escape frost season.
-Early tilling. This is the best of all, but also quite hard to accomplish. Cut the weeds and till up the soil so that it can heat up in the sun. Then the radiant heat from the soil warms the vines a little bit.

--The last method, which, until this year, I haven’t seen used in years is “smudge pots”…horrible things that belch and burn diesel fuel and make vineyards look like the scenery of hell. Problem with smudge pots is that they use huge amounts of fuel (50 gallons/acre/hour) and pollute pollute and pollute.

So why do I tell you all of this?

2008 was the worst frost season in at least 30 years --- and in some areas perhaps the worst ever. All of the above methods protect grapes for about 3 degrees—to about 27 or 28. This year there were areas that saw 25 degree nights that lasted for ten hours! No control can defeat that sort of cold. And what’s more, it was for many nights, not just a few.

The result other than very very very tired vineyard managers (good vineyard managers have a “frost alarm” next to their bed which gets them up when the temperature and dew-point gets to a certain level so that they can throw a thermos of coffee into their white pickup truck and head off into the cold to turn on their sprinklers and fans) is that we have lost a goodly number of grapes this year (some say as much as 10% of the entire crop). Until flower set is finished in June it is hard to tell the true damage, but if you have ever seen a frosted vineyard you can’t doubt that there is trouble….they look like they have been hit with a blow-torch. What’s more, some varieties are stupid…especially Pinot Noir (my favorite, of course) which puts its little flower buds peaking out ABOVE the top leaves.

So it has been an exciting spring, but farming is always exciting. So far however, everything looks on course for good quality grapes this year…maybe just not a lot of them.

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