Rain, Rain, go away - or don’t go away?? Every once in a while I get one same question asked again and again, and lately it has been: “What does all of this rain (and cold weather/hail/snow) do to the grapevines? Luckily, I have been around to see years with plenty of rain, although the lack of rain seems the recent normal. Do I want more rain? No more rain? Well…. The past few years have been a real test for us with the drought, as the winery and the vineyards are both on well water, and we had no way to know if we would run out of water. Luckily, we didn’t run out and the vines were able to produce grapes as normal, no issues. Now we are going from lack of water to excess, which is great news for everyone. To answer the main question, “does the rain affect the vines?”, it is a yes and no answer. As I write, the vines are still dormant as it is winter, and during dormancy we can have as much rain as possible, and even snow is fine, which we didn’t get but the nearby hills got a few inches. Heavy rains may erode the soil and move it down the local creeks, but even that doesn’t affect the vines themselves. The good part about the rain is that it recharges the underground aquifers around the winery so it will assure we have plenty of groundwater next year. The well won’t run dry, and we will not worry about irrigating the vines throughout the summer. The rain in May, however, may indirectly affect the vines in that it may make vineyards too muddy to get tractors in once the vines start budding out and producing leaves and shoots. Once the shoots are a few inches tall the vines must be sprayed with some sort of product like sulfur dust to prevent the formation of powdery mildew. It is critical to get the dust on as soon as possible as powdery mildew can reproduce very well in the springtime. The other problem with not being able to get tractors in at around budbreak is that we need to cut down the cover crops in the last few weeks of frost season. The cover crops can prevent the flow of air through the vines, and it would then let the cold air remain near the tender green shoots which could cause the shoots to die off if cold enough. The timing of rainfall is also important for all vineyards, and it also goes back to what I was just talking about. The early rains in winter are great when nothing is going on in the vineyards. Springtime rains do get problematic, but as we found out in 2022, a series of late spring storms made it so that we did not have to water our Tipperary Pinot Noir vineyard until late June into July. The extra groundwater in our area was enough for the vines to thrive on until the temperatures really got hot. We saved water! So now I must answer the more rain question. Do I want more rain? I say yes, but I don’t want a deluge at this point, and I would rather have it spread out over springtime. Let us do our vineyard work and water the vineyards at the same time. Farming isn’t so complicated, but you can see how dependent it is on the weather!