After the frosts, a drought?

The summer solstice will soon be here, the vineyards are luxuriant and the land looks truly summery.

During the month of May, the shoots on the vines were manually thinned, fundamental in regulating the plants’ yield and balancing the leafy parts. The vineyards that suffered frost at the end of April and that had led us to fear for the worst have now given signs of rapid improvement, indicating less of a loss than was first estimated. Even the ground cover between the rows of vines is in full flower, in particular the Leguminosae species, which are essential for increasing organic matter in the ground and creating the humus matrix.

However, water is always on our minds: from the 1st of January until now we have registered only 270 mm of rain, compared to the 520 mm of the same period last year. In particular, there were 120 mm of rain in the month of May 2016 compared to 38 mm in the same month of 2017. On one hand, the dry weather has allowed us to carry out all our agricultural tasks without interruptions or slowdowns. On the other hand, the underground water reserve is decreasing, creating worries for the upcoming summer season which is usually quite dry.

We can’t control the weather, nor do we have the means to face problems of this type, but we can use all our skills to manage the leaf growth, for example. And we can also hope in some sporadic rain.

As Franco Peruzzini, one of our historic, now-retired vineyard workers, always said: “Even when there are a lot of grapes, they can become few, but when they are few they can still be a lot”.