I've lost entire vintages overnight.
Here's what winter survival looks like when you farm wine in the highest elevation wine region in North America.
Winter is the most important and least controllable season in my vineyard. I can't stop the cold and since the vines go dormant, I don't find out the results until May.
Most years blend together, but there are three scenarios that keep me up at night.
The Fall of 2020 was unseasonably warm. Days got into the 70s without a freeze until November. Then it dropped to 13 degrees overnight. Without a gradual decline into dormancy, every vine above got zapped above ground. They came back from the roots, but I lost my entire 2021 vintage with zero way to prevent it.
Before I took over, my dad had also lost the entire vineyard to hard frosts that dropped below -10 midwinter. This is rare, but when it happens the grapes simply can't survive it and there's nothing I can really do to prevent it.
Last year I lost a third of my vineyard above ground and so did other growers in the region. It never got excessively cold and it was a normal Fall so we are a bit stumped as to why. Our best hypothesis is that since it was such a mild winter without snow, the ground got so dry the vines couldn't make it through. The only thing I can do about that is irrigate heavily right before the water gets shut off in October. I'm not sure how effective it is because that water would have to last 5 months but it's all I've got. This winter has been even drier than last.
I could get crop insurance, but prefer to steer away from government subsidies to make my own contingency plans.
We'll see what happened in May!
