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Vineyards and Virginia's Topsy-Turvy Weather

Is climate change affecting Virginia's vineyards, or is it just crazy Spring weather? The balmy February and March encouraged plants to bud early, only to be damaged or killed by the bitterly cold temperatures of last week. WMRA’s Jessie Knadler talks to two winemakers in Rockbridge County about techniques and strategies they employ to keep up with shifting weather patterns.

Remember how warm it was in March? A week of highs in the mid to upper 70s — forsythia bloomed, green grass shot up – only to be followed by this freakishly cold April. Temperatures dipped to the low 20 degrees last Saturday night, with temperatures 15 or 20 degrees below average last week.

The early spring followed by a harsh blast of winter has been a big concern for area wine makers. The state wine industry, some 255 wineries in all, has an annual economic impact of $750 million, according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Mary Hughes and David Vermillion own and operate Jump Mountain Vineyard, a small, three-acre vineyard of 4,000 vines in Rockbridge County. It’s a beautiful site: gorgeous views of the mountain, great elevation, great soil. But the topsy turvy weather patterns have hurt their small production.

Mary Hughes shows me a plant damaged by the most recent weekend freeze.

MARY HUGHES:  If they have started to leaf out like this vine we’re showing you here has already started to do then it’s very fragile. Or if it’s all the way out with leaves then obviously at 32 degrees when it freezes then the open buds can be damaged. The leaves can be burnt by frost. If you cut this open you’ll see the bud is dead. It’s brown inside.

When the couple planted their first vines in 2008, the plan was to grow vinifera – or non-hybrid – grape varieties such as Refosco, which is a temperamental Italian grape, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Vinifera produce great tasting wines, but they’re not the most cold tolerant. In fact, the couple had 100 Refosco plants die two winters ago. 

HUGHES:  Oh, it’s pretty heart breaking. Two years ago, after the Polar Vortex, we didn’t see immediately the split vines but then when they leafed out in the spring, we thought, “oh great, they’re alive, they survived,” but then they started flagging, as the season got warmer, and the rains stopped coming and the vines were under stress. They couldn’t sustain the leaf growth. And that’s when we started seeing the vines die.

They’ve since replanted but have to wait a few weeks until the new vines leaf out before they can assess the full damage from the recent freezes. 

HUGHES:  We’re hoping this is just an extraordinary event that isn’t going to change our game plan about the type of grapes we grow. But I guess year after year of this kind of problem we might switch.

She’s talking about switching, or rather, adding the popular French American hybrid to their production. French American hybrids are hardier and can withstand greater weather fluctuations.

HUGHES: There’s a lot of it grown in Virginia for sure. We were hard headed and wanted to do I guess this difficult thing which Virginia Tech, in all fairness, had warned us the Shenandoah Valley might not be the best place to try to grow the vinifera grape varieties.

SHEP ROUSE:  It is very true Virginia has not got the ideal climate for growing grapes.

Shep Rouse is the owner and operator of Rockbridge Vineyard, 18 acres in Raphine where he harvests some 80 tons of grapes per year – Pinot Noir, Reisling. The majority of his vineyard is the French American hybrid.

ROUSE:  We have a Continental climate and Continental climates are prone to spikes in temperatures this time of year – warm, warm weather in February, cold, cold weather after warm weather.   We also get hail storms, hurricanes, tornadoes [laughs].

So how does he protect his plants? Well, his site, which he’s owned since 1989, is on a slope and offers some protection from the cold.

ROUSE:  We get enough of a temperature inversion that the coldest air goes down into the valleys and that displaces warmer air which comes up.

He also double prunes, an increasingly common practice as a hedge against unpredictable spring weather. The Jump Mountain winemakers double prune as well.

The downside? It’s double the work.

HUGHES:  Unless global warming actually changes the weather pattern here such that we don’t get these late spring frosts, I think we feel it’s part of the price we pay for growing these grape vines here in Rockbridge County, which we think has a lot of advantages too.  But the weather in the Spring is our hard time of year.

Jessie Knadler is the editor and co-founder of Shen Valley Magazine, a quarterly print publication that highlights the entrepreneurial energy of the Shenandoah Valley. She has been reporting off and on for WMRA, and occasionally for National Public Radio, since 2015. Her articles and reporting have appeared everywhere from The Wall Street Journal to Real Simple to The Daily Beast. She is the author of two books, including Rurally Screwed (Berkley), inspired by her popular personal blog of the same name, which she wrote for six years. In her spare time, she teaches Pilates reformer, and is the owner of the equipment-based Pilates studio Speakeasy Pilates in Lexington. She is mom to two incredible daughters, June and Katie. IG: @shenvalleymag