A little note from our vineyard manager, Kris:
Kris Hicks, vineyard operations manager for Trione Vineyards and Vimark Vineyards. (Photo: John Costill)
“Over all things are going well. So far the spring and the beginning of summer have been in our favor. With all the winter rains and the sunshine the last few months, the plants are doing extremely well. There have been a few monkey wrenches thrown in there like the rain a couple weeks ago followed by some record setting heat for the month of June. As long as we can keep on top of things, the yields look great and it is shaping up to be a successful year.
The shoot thinning process is complete and now we are moving to getting all of the wire lifted and the leaves pulled in order to open up the fruit zone to air and sunshine. We are hoping to get some of our new developments planted in the coming month. This includes 3 acres of Sauvignon Blanc that will solely for the purpose of Trione. I am wanting to try a new trellis design to improve on the quality of fruit from an already great site as well.”
We had a lot of record high days and many of you may be wondering if that will affect the grapes. Here is what Kris said about that:
“The hot weather was fine, it doesn’t hurt anything but it makes working outside a little miserable. We had to change our start times for that week to start a couple hours earlier in order to be finished by 2:00 PM. Now we are back to the traditional 50* mornings and 82* days. Pretty nice working weather. “
Many of you may be wondering how close we are to harvesting, we are not that far away, it’ll be here before we know it! “It looks like we are about 2 weeks away from the start of veraison. We are seeing full bunch closure in the Chardonnay, Petite Syrah and Petite Verdot. With the Pinot and Sauvignon Blanc are not too far behind. The last 3 years we have seen veraison start much earlier. As early as the last week of June.
Since we actually had a winter this year, the plants went into a longer dormancy. This is pushing our growing cycle back to what is considered “normal”. Thanks for the update Kris! We can’t wait to see how the rest of this year turns out. Harvest is around the corner!! We hope to see you all in the tasting room this summer, the weather is great here now and we have a few new, noteworthy wines to share with you.
Cheers,
Jess & Team Trione
