A stunning day here today - warm and dry. And, we have bud burst which is great, but about two weeks earlier than anticipated. With bud burst the cycle starts all over again – it is very exciting, and now we’ll watch over the vines as the grow foliage and then grapes!Meantime, for the next 3 or 4 weeks, all we have to do is worry about frost! We had two severe ones yesterday and today, both reaching minus 5 degrees C, which had all the Martinborough wineries running their frost machines, flying helicopters, lighting their fr
ost pots and anything else that they can do to avoid risk of frost damage. Fighting frost is an incredible task, and very interesting – if you want to know anything about it, drop us a note at info@murdoch-james.co.nzWe use water sprinklers on our Waiata block, and in the morning the frozen water is a beautiful sight. At our Blue Rock vineyard the sloping ground protects from frost. Why? Because frost behaves water, and so runs off sloping ground. We are
very fortunate to have the only large vineyard in Martinborough planted on a hillside. Not having frost risk on our largest block is a very valuable benefit, and saves tens of thousand of $’s each year.
