Sunday, March 05, 2006

Vilafonte 2006 Harvest Blog - day 23

What is Cape weather during harvest 2006?

I’m quite happy with weather this harvest. Yes, it was windy and warm earlier, and drove the Brix up fast, but then the vines stopped adding brix yet continued to ripen… Yes, we had a particularly hot Saturday. And yes, we’ve had perfect ripening days…warm days, cool nights. And yes, we had a light rainy day, with more to come this week. But all in all, to me it has been good harvest weather, with just a few hiccups.

Cape weather, similar to California’s north coast, comes in cycles of temperature. See below Phil’s weather graph for February, and watch how warm and cool cycles over 3-5 days. This chart by Phil Freese, taken from weather station near Fairview, 2.06 Graph shows max and min
temperature and ET (evapotranspiration – represents evaporative demand on the grapevines due to heat, wind, low humidity, etc). For reference, our harvest started Feb. 9.

Zelma Long

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