Amalie Robert Estate Climate Update: 2011 April & May

Hello and Welcome!

This is the combined climate update for April and May 2011.
Well if you live here in Ecotopia, you know April and May have just been intolerable. If you live somewhere other than here, we hope you have been enjoying the Spring and early Summer. We have had several "grumpy farmer days" and are still awaiting ours.
But looking out into the vineyard today as I write this, I am encouraged to persevere. I see a beautifully sunny blue sky with a temperature all the way up to 53 degrees! The vines have sauntered out of there long winters nap and have begun the task of creating new shoots and leaves. Each morning they await the warm embrace of sunrise. That is because, unlike the rest of us, they don't drink coffee.
In farming the one thing we can count on is not being able to count on the weather. But we formulate our plans and strategies hoping for the best and expecting the worse. As someone once said "Cheer up it could be worse. So I cheered up and it got worse."
The early season vineyard work primarily consists of getting the vines ready for their big day - Bud Break. Ernie does the cover crop recycling every year to provide nourishment for our vines. The vines themselves also need a bit of cleaning up. The specific tasks are pruning back last year's growth and tying the remaining canes down to the fruiting wire, which by the way, is a clean 30 inches above grade.
This is important to know when calculating the cubic foot capacity of our "solar leaf array." In cool growing seasons, like all of them since 2006, we don't ask a lot from our canopy, we require it! Think about the futuristic film the Matrix, where humans are referred to as batteries i.e. "Copper Tops." They are a power source used to serve a machine controlled planet. You can also think taxpayers and government, but I digress.
Right. So each leaf on a vine is a contributor of energy to that vine's ultimate purpose - to reproduce by ripening grape seeds. The more leaves that are exposed to what little sunshine we receive increase the energy available to the vine. During the day, the leaves create and store energy as the plant can only translocate it out of the leaves slowly. However, this is temperature dependent. Below 50 degrees, the plants vascular system does very little translocation of energy from the leaves to the vine. This means that when it is cold at night, or during the day, the vine cannot fully "discharge" the leaves. The result is the next morning the leaves have a diminished capacity to create energy from the photosynthesis because they have no more storage capacity. The concept is similar to drinking beer at a BBQ (only so much storage capacity,) which is an exercise we leave to the reader.
The teachable moment here, (actually 4 years worth) is that we want as many exposed leaves as we can grow. This is the primer for the advanced, hands-on canopy management course here this Summer. We also are taking up loads of CO2 which makes everyone happy. So are we behind, and if so, what does that mean to the 2010 vintage wine quality?
Well let's look into the vineyard for that answer. We declared Bud Break on May 5th this year. Does anyone know another vintage that was declared so late? How about 2008? That's right! We declared bud Break on May 5th in 2008. The press loves the 2008s so we've got that going for us, and that is nice. Another pertinent fact is that we finished harvesting our Pinot Noir on October 31 in 2008, and it was a beautiful day.
Now, let's look at the numbers, such as they are.
We have recorded about 37.61 degree days from April 1 through May 31. This is about on track for 2010 when we recorded 85 degree days, but significantly less than the 200+/- degree days for the same period in 2007 thru 2009. Rainfall for the 2 month period was 7.71 inches compared with 7.96 inches in 2010. A "Dog Nose" kind of Spring - cold and wet.
The month of April accumulated ZERO degree days, had a high of 80.5 and a low of 32.4 with 4.75 inches of rain scattered throughout the month. The average monthly humidity was 75.31% and the average dew point was 38.62 degrees. Yeah, Ernie got a new weather station for Christmas.
The month of May accumulated 37.61 degree days, had a high of 77.6 and a low of 35.3 with 2.96 inches of the liquid form of sunshine. The average monthly humidity was 72.97% and the average dew point was 43.24 degrees. It looks dryer and warmer than April, but it didn't feel that way.
We are counting the days as we await bloom and (hopefully) an economically viable fruit set. For once we see bloom, we can lock in all of our fears for a protracted and potentially devastating media portrayal of our harvest. We need 105 days from bloom through harvest to achieve nice Oregon flavors and aromas in our Estate Grown wines. Once bloom happens, we feel a call to action and a sense or urgency that will focus the mind and create a natural prioritization of events. We also mark the calendar and imagine the most beautiful month of October that we can.
All the best,
Ernie