The weather turned cold here in the Rogue Valley this week, with temperatures dropping into the single digits (fahrenheit) at my house and around ten degrees in some nearby vineyards. This is far from extreme, especially for those of you in the midwest or even nearby in Eastern Oregon, but for vitis vinifera it can be damaging to canes and buds, affecting the following year’s crop if the pruning is not done carefully.

Young vines and older vines that were stressed during the growing season are particularly susceptible to cold damage. The vineyard I’ve worked most closely with over the past ten vintages, owned and managed by Randy and Rebecca Gold in Talent, showed excellent health last year so I am not too concerned at this point about the older vines, but we will want to take a close look at the young vines in Block B, which are going into only their fourth year. We’ll be looking for dead tissue in the renewal canes and cutting open some buds to assess viability, and may decide to adjust the pruning to leave a few extra buds for added insurance.

One of my first jobs in the wine industry, after flattening cardboard boxes for a while, was pruning. I should mention that this was in Minnesota, where temperatures of thirty below were all too common, and where a record cold day in the Rogue Valley would be considered positively balmy. We pruned in the fall, between the first frost and the first snowfall, which could be a window of several weeks or fewer than ten minutes depending on the year. Vines had multiple trunks for flexibility, so that as they were pruned they could be laid down and pinned to the ground with steel stakes (if the ground was not yet frozen) or held down with bits of firewood (if it was). If there was time, and the snow was not piling up too quickly, a tractor might turn a bit of soil over the newly pinned-down vine, or one could spread straw over the vine for insulation. The straw also made a nice home for mice.

Needless to say, this was not cozy work, nor was it particularly efficient on a large scale. One of the top priorities of viticultural research in the midwest is therefore, understandably, development of a cold-hardy, disease resistant hybrid vine which is also capable of producing decent wine. For me the easier solution was to move to Oregon where a vine could depend on not being wrestled to the ground every fall, but I have great respect for the dedicated winegrowers of the midwest who are willing to go head to head with mother nature in pursuit of their passion.