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Weather & Climate

A collection of 290 posts

A wet, chilly week gets the 2025-26 winter back on track

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.

Assessing the Lovely Wet Beginning to the 2025-26 Winter

Assessing the Lovely Wet Beginning to the 2025-26 Winter

Five days into January, we've accumulated nearly 16 inches of precipitation, which is 176% of what we'd expect for the winter to date. Just as important to how much rain we've received is how it has fallen: gradually and with breaks in-between.

2025 Harvest Recap: the Tortoise Crosses the Finish Line

2025 Harvest Recap: the Tortoise Crosses the Finish Line

Last Tuesday, with small clean-up picks of Grenache, Cinsaut, and Counoise and one recalcitrant lot of Bourboulenc (more on that later) we completed the 2025 harvest. This was the 11th week of harvest, which was our longest in more than two decades and our second-longest ever.

Harvest 2025 draws to a close, interrupted but not derailed by rain

Harvest 2025 draws to a close, interrupted but not derailed by rain

Early Tuesday morning, we brought in Mourvedre from our Scruffy Hill block. Ian got up early to document it, and got some dramatic photos that he shared in our social media feeds, including the below cover photo: With that pick, we have brought in our last substantial block and are

Harvest 2025 at its Midpoint: Hurry Up and Wait

Harvest 2025 at its Midpoint: Hurry Up and Wait

At a time when we're usually at the peak of harvest, we instead spent much of the week in a holding pattern. Early Wednesday morning, a rare thunderstorm rolled through, caused by a cutoff low left behind after the passage of tropical storm Mario last week.

2025 Harvest Update: A warm August gets things going, then a September cooldown pushes pause

2025 Harvest Update: A warm August gets things going, then a September cooldown pushes pause

Sometimes harvest hits like a ton of bricks. Not this year. We're almost two weeks into the 2025 harvest, and it still feels like things are ramping up. On August 28th, we brought in our first estate lot, off of our oldest Viognier planting.

Veraison 2025: Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Veraison 2025: Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Veraison, if you're unfamiliar with the term, is a physiological stage of grape development where the berries stop accumulating mass and start accumulating sugar. More visibly, red grapes start their color change from green, while white grapes take on more of a yellow tint. Both red and white

Don't sleep on the importance of Paso Robles' chilly nights

On Monday, I got back from two weeks of vacation in Italy. It was a lovely trip with family celebrating a milestone birthday for my mom. I come back having felt like I unplugged successfully from work, which I'm not always great at doing. Our destination within Italy

2025 Summer Solstice Vineyard Tour: It's Been Average, Which Is Just Perfect

One month ago, I wrote about how we'd exited frost season and entered flowering in ideal conditions. Not too hot, not too cold, not too windy. Just... benign. I'm pleased to report that the last month warmed up, as you'd expect in late May

Two things to celebrate: 2025 frost season ends with no damage and flowering begins under ideal conditions

This past weekend was the Paso Robles Wine Festival, our unofficial end to frost season. For the second consecutive year, it was a picture-perfect day, in the 70s and breezy, with both winter's below-freezing nights and summer's hundred-degree days feeling comfortably far away. And yet, as