2022 Vintage update

2022 has been an exciting vintage so far! April gave us quite the scare with some sub freezing temps and snow on the ground after we had budbreak at several vineyard sites. Our vineyard managers were up 5 nights in a row running wind machines making sure the vines had air moving through the rows, pushing that colder air away and bringing down warmer air from above.

After surviving that scare, we had the wettest May on record, with temps well below normal. Great for our water table, but it pushed us way behind in regards to bloom. While the canopies look great, our fruit development got a VERY late start. We are JUST finishing bloom at our cooler vineyard sites like Binaural Block and Les Collines Vineyard. On average we are 2-3 weeks behind a normal vintage. June was also cooler than normal, and July so far seems to be tracking the same, so we are preparing for harvest to begin the 3rd or 4th week of September, as opposed to late August or the first week of September like in the past few years.

That being said, we LOVE cooler vintages (think 2008, 2010, and 2011). In the vineyards we have already shoot thinned in order to keep our crop levels at a manageable level. The vines are VERY fruitful this year, which would be great in a warm vintage because we can ripen a larger crop in warm vintages. However with this late start and cooler weather we will making some thinning passes to get the crop levels balanced for a cooler vintage. It is of course site dependent…our cooler sites will see lower yields, and our warmer sites will see a bit more tonnage.  But overall we are expecting a lower yield. Ideally, a warm September and rain and frost-free October are what we are hoping for!

Make sure you are checking in regularly to our Instagram page, Trey is out in the vineyards doing live updates and them posting them on our page, so you can see how things are developing. Here are some photos of how things look so far!

Cheers!

The SOFH Team!