The weather is really the wild card every season. Some aspects are controllable, including the type of vine you choose to grow - matching it as best as possible to the location, the soil inputs to meet the needs of the vines, pest and competing vegitation control as well. But the rain fall, sunshine and heat vary from year to year.
As is the case this year, its been really cold, perhaps the coldest May we've recorded in 14 years and an average June but quite cool at the start and only at the back end hitting the high 20's and low 30's. We'll be a week behind normal for flowering but with a normal summer and fall the rest of the way we can expect a decent year.
Who knows perhaps we'll get and extra week or two in the fall before frost settles in. In any event the vines are looking good so far, crop load adjustments are made with shoot and pre-bloom cluster thinning and its nice to see the L'Acadie and Castel starting to mature with bigger and more clusters on each vines.
