2009 vineyard update
We are now finishing bloom in most of our vineyards. This is a good time to have a look at the growing season so far. Overall the season has been very nice to date with our Growing Degree Days (GDD) tracking close to 2003 (a warm year). Below is the current GDD chart from WSU:
GDD is computed by substracting 50 from the average daily temperature and cumulating that number over time. GDD in the Yakima Valley was 720 as of June 21st. A warm year usually means a early harvest and sometimes lower acidities. We are ready for an early one at this point!
Over the next few days I’ll post some observation and pictures of our main vineyard sites.
June 24th, 2009 at 2:26 am
Pretty cool post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say
that I have really liked browsing your posts. Any way
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon!
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:28 pm
[...] About two weeks ago we got a hard freeze in Eastern Washington (see this post) and we are still not sure what are the long term consequences of this unusual weather event. One fact we know is that the weather stopped the growing season – drop dead. Below is the current GDD chart (see this post about the exciting world of Growing Degree Days): [...]
June 17th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
[...] is the GDD chart (for more on GDD http://rieslingrules.com/the_book/winemakers-blog/vineyards/2009-vineyard-update/ - you will also see the 2009 chart in [...]