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I have been growing grapes in one form or another since 1998 in the Puget Sound AVA. We’ve had plenty of cold years and some warm. We’ve had years start out cold and end up warm and the opposite. We live in a fickle environment, which makes our wines so special! This year might (or might not, mother nature is hard to predict) be the earliest we have ever seen the buds emerge from the vines this year. We are two to three weeks earlier than what we see in a normal year.
What does that mean for our vineyard? Not sure yet, but having early bud break can have it’s advantages in a cool climate such as our. I think it’s a win-win for us here in the heat challenged Puget Sound region. If it’s hot all spring and summer long it won’t make too much of a difference for since we are are already coming from a very cool climate and we might have an earlier than normal harvest. IMHO, there isn’t a way that I see us getting so hot that it ruins our crop. We aren’t there yet, maybe in 100 years we will be growing Syrah, but not now. But making a nice full bodied Pinot Noir is not a bad thing for us here in the Puget Sound AVA
If El Nino turns on us in the middle of the summer, believe me I’ve seen it. We are still ahead of the game. Budbreak is still giving us a 2-3 week headstart this year so if we get a couple of crummy weeks of weather at the end of the growing year we have that “reserve” of heat to pull from. I think it’s all good for us!
The only downside is that things are so early that I was caught flat footed with my pruning this year. We’ve never had bud break in late March and I usually have another couple of weeks to prune and take care of winter maintenance, but not this year! But it should all work out in the end and I am looking forward to an excellent crop of Pinot Noir this year!
