March marks the end of the dormant season for vineyards and time for the spring wake up.

What you can expect today are colorful wild flowers and blooming trees and vines.  Those bright colors typically start to come out as early as February with the brilliant yellow flowers of the mustard flowers as they bloom on the rolling hills near the vineyards.  Early flowers to get those pollinators active.

In 2023, the drought broke from an incredible record-breaking amount of rainfall making this year and the expectation is for another spectacular California Super Bloom of wildflowers.  The state flower, the California Poppy, has been showing its beautiful orange petals for the last few weeks dotting and sometimes filling in the landscape, and now almost April, virtually everything is coming alive.

After the winter dormancy where the vines were refueling and preparing for their green shoots, we see greenery on the vines now.  Photosynthesis has started and evidence of flowers showing on the vines.

Unique and common threats to this year’s crop include excessive rain, winds that beat up the vines and can affect the flowers, plus spring frosts.  It seems that the rain is still expected for another couple of weeks anyway.

Growers are concerned too; they are expecting a big crop this year, mainly because of the 2023 rain that fell over the entire state. That might not be as good of a prediction as one might think. Too many clusters will compete for nutrients in the soil, sunlight not reaching the berries because of a lot of green shoots, but more importantly the expectation is for a lot of flowers, and grape bunches.

The ratio of greenery to bunches of fruit is critical for the ripening of the grapes.  Growers are making decisions about how much to cut back their green growth in anticipation to the vines’ reaction to unprecedented rain, while making sure plenty of ventilation and both sun exposure and protection for the grapes.  They must plan way ahead and make predictions of the vine’s growth and act accordingly.

The timing is important because disease or fungus can be the unintended result from improper pruning and unexpected rainfall.

Another option growers are considering as the grapes are going through veraison is to perform a green harvest. This method is performed by hand and that makes it expensive, but it helps for better ripeness of the grapes.  The immature grapes or even cluster of grapes are removed to allow for the healthier grapes to use the nutrients and photosynthesis from the leaves on the vine.  Reducing the number of grapes means the flavors can be more concentrated.  Varieties that are to be used to make a full bodied, concentrated fruit flavor wine like a robust red can benefit from the green harvest process.

The balancing act for the growers this year is to keep enough green for ripening and offset this with the right amount light for the grapes, without damaging them with too much sun.  Many people await to see what the wine experts can create with the 2023 growing season.

Are you a wine collector?  If so, storing conditions are critical!  The stash under the stairs, in the crawl space, the hall closet, just have too much in terms of temperature fluctuation; wine does not do well in that environment; it is stressful on the wine.

Also, the refrigerator is too cold for storage or ageing, and it may even form tartaric crystals in the bottle, which can be off putting.   You need a solution to age your wine.  That means you need a place to keep the bottles safe (temperature controlled at about 55 ̊F, dark, little to no vibration) until you are ready to enjoy or sell them.

If your wine room is not cooling properly, please do call us. We can help.

Cold Craft also has a team of people to help your wine cellar dreams come true and, when built correctly, we can keep your wine at the ideal temperature.  Our network also includes sommeliers for advice or parties, racking craftsmen, cellar general contractors and the like to work as a team to get you up and running, plus distributors to help fill it.

Call us to help with your heating, cooling or wine cellar refrigeration needs.
Cold Craft, Inc. 408.374.7292 San Francisco Bay Area