“April is the cruelest month” wrote TS Eliot in The Wasteland, and so it has proved. In Sonoma County we have had the coldest spring in over 30 years. The press has been relatively quiet about the effects of severe cold in April. As a farmer, I expect to have to deal with some new surprise every growing season, and the weather usually throws the most challenges. Too cold, too hot, too wet, too dry: farmers and gardeners alike always have something to complain about. This year has been different. Rather than little challenges, Mother Nature has been very cruel – to a degree that I hadn’t really anticipated.

When I purchased crop insurance for the first time in January, I couldn’t really justify the expense of getting the fullest coverage available on all of the vineyard. After all, the possibility of “catastrophic loss” seemed remote.

I now know what a catastrophic loss looks like.

On March 31st we had the first frost which went below 30 degrees. We had had the frost systems on a number of times, but there had been no damage. On the 31st we were slightly singed; I reckoned 10-20% of the unprotected part of the vineyard (which includes all of the Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir clones 114 and part of the 115) was lost, but all of the frost protected blocks were unscathed. With warm days over the next two weeks, the plants recovered and second buds opened where there had been initial frost damage. Things were looking good. I had finished mowing and spreading the compost; the Discovery Channel’s Green Planet came out and filmed in the vineyard for an upcoming show on compost.

The nights were still cold and the frost alarm was going off regularly, much to the chagrin of the guests staying in our farmhouse at Olivet Grange! Saturday and Sunday the 19 and 20th dealt two big blows, my estimates of frost damage grew to about 20% of the entire vineyard. Much of it was severely damaged. The new second shoots, which had just started to come in behind the first damage in the Pinot Gris were killed. So although folks say, “Oh, you might get second crop.” If I do, it will not be from the canes, only from the crown.

On Monday the 21st, I surveyed the damage before heading off to New York to work with my distributor. The knockout blow was delivered in the wee hours of Thursday morning, the 24th. I called to check on the temperature before I went to bed. I was certain we were in for a very cold night, but I felt helpless in Manhattan. My only comfort was knowing my vineyard manager was monitoring the situation and would put the sprinklers on as soon as the temperature dropped to 38 degrees. I got a call at 5:15am California time when waiting to board a train to New Jersey. Earlier that morning, the temperature got down to 24 degrees in parts of our vineyard. The micro sprinkler frost system failed at these temperatures. The water was freezing before it created the protective ice cubes around the baby clusters and tender foliage which should keep the temperature at 32 degrees and thereby avoid the destruction of the plants’ cells. The next morning most of the vineyard looked as though someone had taken a blow torch to it. Heartbreaking.

At this stage I am not prepared to do a final estimate as some parts of the vineyard looked even worse today, but the less affected parts were showing some extra pushing of new shoots at the crown. I have certainly lost 90% of the Pinot Gris and between 50-70% of the Pinot Noir.

These photos were taken by Robert Holmes. He had heard of the damage at Olivet Grange and asked if he could take some photos for his forthcoming book “Passion for Pinot”. Some of the photos are very beautiful, but of course they are also profoundly sad.

Frost is a risk I worry about every year. Most years, it is what my husband Simon calls, “a waste of a good worry”. This year it was justified.