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Like many vineyard growers across the Northeast, we at Rienzi Estate faced one of the most severe spring freeze events in our history early this week. The damage was devastating—our Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc suffered the heaviest losses, with primary shoots killed across nearly all our varietals. While we've always prepared for this possibility, the scale of this event is unprecedented for us.
When we saw temperatures were dropping below 30 degrees, we sprayed our frost protection strategy: a spray combining potassium, copper, and kelp extract. In theory, this combination works by giving the green tissue an anti-freeze effect while copper reduces ice nucleotides. But when the thermometer plummeted to 27 degrees, it simply was not enough. At that stage of bud break, the vines couldn't survive the cold.
This is precisely why we maintain a diverse portfolio of varieties at Rienzi Estate. Early-budding cultivars like Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc push their shoots earlier in spring—making them vulnerable to late freezes. Our later-budding varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot, emerged from dormancy later and sustained significantly less damage, though they weren't spared entirely.
The preliminary assessment is sobering: we've lost approximately 80-100 percent of our Chardonnay crop and 50–80 percent of our Cabernet Franc. Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot show 15–25 percent damage, though the full picture won't be clear for several more days. Grapevines are remarkably resilient and can push secondary shoots when primary buds are damaged, but this comes at a cost. Those backup shoots are far less productive, and the stress on the vines is considerable.
We will still harvest fruit this season, but it will be a fraction of what we anticipated just days ago.
At the end of the day, this is farming—and farming means accepting nature's unpredictability. There is one silver lining: the 1.5 additional acres of vines we're planting this weekend were not in the ground yet when the freeze hit. That small mercy is what we're holding onto as we move forward.
