A wet, chilly week gets the 2025-26 winter back on track
After a month of warm, sunny weather that stretched from early January to early February, we were starting to wonder if winter was over and we'd have to start worrying about budbreak. Thanks to 6+" of rain in the last week, we're back on track.
Yesterday, we closed our winery, office, and tasting room early and sent people home so they wouldn’t be on the road when a storm front passed through. This was quite a storm. It produced enough thunder to get our normally-chill dog huddled on our couch next to us and enough lightning to illuminate our house like a fireworks display. If you're not from California, you may think this is no big deal, but thunderstorms are rare here, a roughly once-a-year phenomenon. We saw 50-mile-per-hour winds, torrential rain, and enough hail that I found a few small drifts outside the tasting room this morning.
The rain was most welcome. Since the last time I wrote about our winter back on January 7th, we've had more than a month of dry, sunny weather. A week into January we were at about 175% of the normal precipitation for that point in the rain year, but by the end of the first week of February – after a totally dry month during what is normally the wettest period of the year – we were down to just 105% of normal. With just four below-freezing nights and a bunch of warm days (sixteen that got into the 70s and another two that topped 80) we were starting to get worried that we might see some of the very early budbreak that was being reported up north. What we really wanted was a series of cold, wet storms that would chill and saturate the soils and remind the vines that it was still, in fact, February.
Done and done. Eight of the last nine days have seen measurable precipitation, totaling 6.03" here at the vineyard. Just two of those nine days have seen temperatures climb even into the 60s, and those two only barely. It dropped below freezing last night, and is supposed to freeze tonight and (after some more rain tomorrow) do the same Friday night and Saturday night. We're now at 21.96" for the winter and back up to 133% of normal rainfall for this point in the season.
We had a sunny interlude today and I used it to get out into the vineyard and assess how things were looking. The short answer: great. For the longer answer, and photos to prove it, read on. I'll start with a view looking south toward Las Tablas Creek across an undulating block of dormant Roussanne, cover crops green and thick:
Las Tablas Creek is flowing merrily away. This photo was taken where it empties into the reservoir that the property's previous owner built. As you can see, even after six inches of rain in a week, it's hardly a raging torrent:
Our calcareous soils are incredibly absorbent, so it's rare that much water runs off, but in recent years we've been working to direct and make use of even that runoff in productive ways. Chief in this effort is a series of three retention basins that we have excavated where water had been flowing off the property. Our goal is to slow the flow of water on the surface by capturing it in the basins and then to pump that water out of the basins in between rain events when possible. We've arranged our compost piles across and perpendicular to the flow of water so that nutrients and microbes flow into these basins, creating in effect large batches of compost tea for us to use. Below you can see one of the drainage channels that we built (left) and one of the basins (right). Both are working as we intended:
The ground is saturated enough that we're seeing an explosion of miner's lettuce, a water-loving plant that the Gold Rush miners relied on to stave off scurvy. If you find some near you, give it a try. It tastes like baby spinach:
In drier areas where the sheep haven't grazed recently, we're seeing a proliferation of flowering mustard. I promise that there are vines in there somewhere:
The rain has meant that we've had to pause our work pruning the vineyard. We're a little more than halfway done, but while the wet weather has meant we've had to push back the work, it also has taken the pressure off because it will surely result in delayed budbreak. So there's time to get back out there and make sure the rest of the vineyard looks as good as this Grenache vine:
After most of January felt like spring, it seems like winter is back on track. We're grateful.