There is an energy to this time of year that does not exist in any other month.
The vines are out of dormancy. Shoots are away, the green is back, and blocks that looked like rows of bare sticks six weeks ago are filling in. Winter is all pruning and waiting, and not much moves. Then spring arrives and everything happens at once.
The first sprays are going on now. Shoot thinning starts soon, which is the first real decision of the season: how much fruit each vine will carry, set by hand, months before anybody tastes anything.
And the frost watch is on.
This is the part of spring nobody photographs. From budburst until the risk passes, a clear still night is not a lovely thing, it is a problem. Cold air slides down into the low ground, and if it settles hard enough on young shoots, they are gone. Not damaged. Gone. A share of the crop goes with them, and no amount of good weather later in the season gives it back. So the alarms are set, the forecast gets checked more often than is healthy, and the growers we work with across North Canterbury are awake in the small hours on the nights the numbers look wrong.
The good news is that there is warmer weather coming through Labour Weekend. After a run of nights spent watching a thermometer, that is a real relief, and it is the first proper stretch this season where the vines can simply get on with growing.
What we want from here is simple, and entirely out of our hands. Some decent spring rain, warm days to go with it, and nights that stay above zero. That is the whole list.
Ask any grower in October what sort of season it is going to be and you will not get a straight answer, because nobody knows yet. What you can say in October is whether the vines look happy. Right now they do, and there is a good level of excitement about this one.
Cheers,
Nicky
