Sometimes nature helps you out. One of the things I’ve talked about before is that nature does not care about my business plan. That remains true. Sometimes, though, the stars align and things work out the way you hope.
In the midst of this pandemic and with all the challenges being faced by restaurants, retail shops, and consumers many of us are preparing for a softer economy. In the vineyard, that means we’d like to bring in less fruit than we might have otherwise. We can drop fruit during thinning to get that result, but that costs money. This year, thanks to some rain during flowering, it looks like our expected yields will be naturally lower than average. It’s still too early for lag phase estimates, but based on what we can see, lower yields seem likely. We’ll still have enough clusters to fine tune and get the fruit we want (dropping half a ton per acre vs one and a half). So while nature doesn’t care about my business plan, sometimes it works out just right.”-Bill Sweat, Winegrower