#185 A Vine In Recovery: Let it Do What a Vine Will Do.

Following the April 21 freeze, the good news is that most of the vines are fine, with little to no damage. That is, most of them.

A freeze on April 21 damaged some young shoots and buds in our vineyard. Fortunately, grapevines have “secondary” buds that will develop into a new shoot when the primary bud has been damaged. In the foreground above, is a younger shoot from a “secondary” bud. The shoots in the background are much larger, and are from “primary” buds that were not damaged in the freeze.

Back in 2020, we had a severe hailstorm during the first week of June. At the time the shoots were 8-10 inches in length, and the hail tore many of shoots completely in half. The damage was severe, as you can see in the picture below.

This was the first time we had damage like this. I had heard of another vineyard which had experienced similar damage a few years earlier. I called the manager of that vineyard at the time and asked what our options might be, given how much damage there was. In other words, I was asking, “Is here anything we can do to help these vines recover?”

“No,” he said. “Just let the vine recover on its own. Let the vine do what it is going to do.”

It has been a month since the late April freeze of 2026, and most of our vines are fine. In cases where there was damage, we are seeing signs of recovery. It depends upon how severe the injury was in the first place. We see new growth from secondary buds; we are also seeing modest growth from “tertiary” buds.

And if both the “primary” and “secondary” buds have damage, there is actually a third, or “tertiary” bud, which will produce foliage, but not any fruit. What we see above is likely a tertiary. Vines have evolved to produce foliage at the expense of fruit. That is what we are seeing in this instance. The vine needs foliage to survive.

If the primary, secondary, and tertiary buds on the canes have been damaged, then the plant will generate new growth from the trunk. The most cold-sensitive variety we grow is Gewürztraminer, and it absorbed the most damage during the freeze. On the vines below, most of the buds on the canes froze, and now the plants are generating new growth from the base of the vine and from the trunks.

The new growth coming from the top of the trunk will grow long enough to tie down as fruiting canes for next year. But this year, these vines will produce very little fruit, if any at all.

We manage more than 60,000 vines, and every year we lose a few, whether to cold or to other adverse conditions. For the vine in the picture below, the freeze was the final straw. Nothing growing on the canes. Nothing growing from the trunks. We will pull that one up and re-plant a new vine.

Fortunately, the vast majority of the vines were very healthy, with either primary or secondary buds that survived intact from the freeze. The harvest will be lighter than in previous years, but we will still have plenty of fruit to support our production.