We have bud break on the Viognier! We pruned the Viognier in early March, and on April 1, Mike noticed the first signs of buds breaking out of the vines. Bud break, of course, means the vines have come out of their long winter hibernation. They’ve rested and soaked up energy reserves from our fertilized soil, and are now ready to slowly start growing wood, leaves and ultimately fruit. Each bud breaking from the vine will become a single “shoot” (think ‘branch’), and each shoot will in turn produce two clusters of grapes. 

Our job is to protect the delicate little buds from two early-spring threats. 

The first threat is sub-freezing nighttime temperatures that cause frost to form on and inside the buds, potentially damaging or killing them. So we keep an eye on the weather report, and sometimes set our alarm clock for the dead of night.  If temperatures approach freezing, we’ll turn on a sprinkler system set up in the Viognier section of the vineyard. The sprinkler draws water from our well, which is about 50 degrees (fahrenheit). That water will warm the buds a bit, buying them some time. Even if the water eventually freezes, it will actually insulate the buds from even lower temperatures on a frigid night. 

The second early-spring threat — particularly during this unusually wet winter and early spring —  comes from mildew forming on the buds, which can then infect the resulting shoot and grape clusters. So in about 2 weeks, we’ll spray all the vines with an organic, sulfur-based fungicide. More on that later. 

Next up: we expect bud break on our Syrah grapes within a few weeks. We pruned the Syrah 3 weeks later than the Viognier, since the Syrah sits in the lowest and potentially coldest part of the vineyard. By pruning the Syrah later, we gave it more time to clear the coldest temperatures before bud break.