Vineyard frost

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It’s hard to imagine frost on a day like today but over the weekend, the plummeting temperatures destroyed areas of Ontario’s grape crop and had growers scrambling to minimize the threat.

Staff at Vineland Estates winery scrambled to save the vineyard from damage. Winemaker Brian Schmidt got into a helicopter hovering 75 feet above the vineyard stirring up the air so that the warm air above would blanket the grapevines below. That helicopter was in the air for 2 and half hours.

Doug Funk also noticed some trace frost damage on his vines in Lincoln. “A healthy chute has green leaves all the way up, the others look burnt, the frost has burnt them.”

Funk has 150 acres on top of the escarpment all of it generally unscathed by frost thanks to Lake Ontario and the wind machines, the Niagara Peninsula escaped a bullet.

But some of these vines in Niagara are already fragile after being battered by 2 consecutive bitterly cold winters. So does this mean there’ll be enough Niagara grapes to put in bottles this year? “There will be some injury but we will still have a glass of wine to enjoy in the fall.”