Vines blossoming

The year quickly runs along its path. Only a few weeks ago, in the beginning of May, we had to fear frost and loss of our grapes. Now only a short time later summer has set in and our vines are thriving. You can almost watch them grow at this time of the year!

Under the right conditions, warm and with enough rain, the vines grow multiple centimeters every day. We almost can’t keep up threading them into their trellis and tending them to grow in the right direction. Additionally we have to remove vines where there simply are to many, remove shoots from the stems and so on. All of this is done by hand and does keep us well occupied over the next two months. As soon as we’re finished working through all our vineyards, we can start anew.

So we’re pretty busy this time of the year. Still many grapes are developing on the vines which is a great prerequisite for a fine harvest. This makes the work much more bearable, especially when compared to last year. But not only that. Great conditions in May have led to rapid grape development and early blossoming as well. Grape blossoms do not look like much but a vineyard in full bloom spreads an incredibly dulcet scent.

Flowering started around June 4th this year. It is said that it then takes about 100 days until the harvest. But this is a very vague rule since grape variety, weather, water supply and many other parameters have their say as well. Still it is very early and thus we can expect an early harvest. Let’s hope the year continues so nicely, then we can expect an awesome 2017 vintage.