For two days in a row now I’ve watched (fortunately) tiny hail fall from the sky and in to our vineyard. It doesn’t appear to have caused any damage but I have not yet done a full survey of our vineyards. We have started bud break and and some buds are showing leaf separation but so far so good. It reminded me of a phrase that was in my head a lot in the early days of Winderlea, “Mother Nature doesn’t care about your business plan.” It was true then and it is true now but it is one of the things that makes this work so interesting. Each vintage is different. Oftentimes they become known by weather events – the hottest vintage in history or the vintage with biblical rain. So far, this isn’t the vintage of the hail. Fingers crossed that holds. More later…