Drought, Vineyards and the New Normal…
04/08/2014
Vineyards off to a early start for 2014
Perhaps I’m just excited about the new Russell Crowe movie coming out, but it seems like we’ve been in an almost reverse “age of the great Flood” situation out here on the West Coast. As much as I love going on February picnics in Golden Gate Park, this can’t be good in the long run. Plus, there’s the guilty feeling of having dinner outside in early March when our friends on the East Coast are buried under snow for what must be the 5th time this year.
The weather also comes into play when I think about the vineyards and the 2014 harvest: The most common question I get after “is this where we can buy Black Pine Pinot Noir?” when people walk in the tasting room door is “what’s this drought going to do to the grapes?”
The answer, paradoxically, is both “we’re not scared at all” and “we’re terrified!” Allow me to explain…
Most of our vineyards get their water from local well systems and as a result are not dependent on snow pack and reservoirs for water.
Cory Albury, a vineyard manager and old friend from my Kosta Browne days, only somewhat jokingly told me, “I kind of like the drought; it really lets me dial in the amount of water I give the plants, as opposed to really wet years that just drown them.”
Some vineyards, like the Day Ranch in Anderson Valley where a good bit of our Black Pine Pinot is sourced, are dry farmed and do not receive any water other than what falls from the sky or what the vines can pull from underground. Last year, the Day Ranch saw less than an inch of rain between harvests. Nonetheless, the 35-year-old vines have roots so deep and well established that they are able to survive pretty much anything.
On the other hand, this is not to say that we don’t need rain at all—in fact we do and we were pretty nervous earlier in this season. However, our jitters have had less to do with the lack of rainfall and more to do with the moisture around the roots. Dry soil creates dry roots. This can result in early bud break and odd shoot growth. These dry roots can also harm the fruit during set and also affect the vines ability to uptake nutrients. The resulting fruit might seem fine, but not have all the necessary building blocks like potassium and nitrogen to get through to harvest and then become wine.
Luckily, we saw enough rain in January to get those roots wet, and now the rain we just had in March has really soaked things to the degree that our wells should be filled and our vines nice and healthy!
We are however, seeing some very early bud break this year. At Guidici Vineyard (the true Sonoma Coast vineyard a little southwest of the town of Occidental I’ve written about before) we saw bud break two weeks earlier than last year, which was itself a very early year. To some degree, we may find ourselves recalibrating what “normal” is, and these early bud breaks may be part of the new norm.
Drew Huffine
Winemaker
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Drew Huffine