So how is vintage 2024 going so far? It’s a been a %#&@$! (fill in your favorite profanity)

First it was the unusual weather patterns. The last week of March vineyard temperatures reached 22°C (72°F) and again a few weeks later in mid-April 26°C (77°F). The grapevines, like us humans, were confused and the dormant buds began popping open thinking it was mid-May. This outcome was manageable. If the weather continued it simply meant the grapes would ripen earlier and instead of harvesting in October it would shift to September. A quick text message to the family and friends who plan to help with the harvest alerted them about a potential change in schedule was all that was required.

Then on 17 April at 2:17AM my vineyard camera app chimed and a deer decided to make a morning snack of my young Chenin leaves and inflorescence or “grape flowers”, the first signs of grape clusters to come. %#&@$! The deer was walking along the rows like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet in Las Vegas. In the end, “Karl Dieter the Deer” as he is affectionally named by my German friends at Feldtheorie, demolished about 15 vines. Hopefully they will recover, but Karl needed to be stopped. The options were bazooka, dynamite or a fence. We chose the later and last weekend a two-meter high perimeter fence around the vineyard was installed and to really keep %#&@$ Karl away strategically placed sheep’s wool were placed all around the vineyard — apparently deer hate the smell. So now the vines look like they are wearing sweaters.

So in summary, unseasonably warm weather and a deer, okay, I can still breathe, but Mother Nature had one more challenge for Kapitel Zwei Wine in this early season.

19, 21, 22 April in the early morning hours the temperature in the vineyard dropped below 0°C (32°F) for between 30-90 minutes. And then %#&@$! snow. This was all catastrophic for the vines. Remember what I wrote earlier, the vines think its May, meaning the roots are absorbing water and nutrients, and at abnormal cold levels the water within the grapevine freezes causing the leaves to roll up and eventually die and fall off. Without leaves, no grapes. If the water freezes in the trunk the grapevines can even split apart. Thankfully this didn’t happen, but the vines are now in shock and will hopefully begin responding to the sun in a few days to weeks, but my best guess is that I will not see any fruit from about 40% of the vines.

Bottles Arrived

500 of my 500 ml bottles arrived last week. They will wait in storage until the end of the year for bottling. One of the labeled bottles was captured in aquarelle (water-colored paint) by my talented friend Catherine Pawlow (Instagram @cathpawlow). I liked the design so much I designed a t-shirt with it on the front — which can now be yours for only 20 EUR. 🤭

And finally…

To end this newsletter on a positive note, I submitted my thesis. 🥳 Hooray. 13,267 words, 53 pages and 106 references later. “Organic Banana Peel Compost as a Sustainable Source of Minerals for Young V. Vinifera” will be made public for your reading pleasure — assuming I get a good grade. The hardest part was laying out the text and charts in Word based on all of the formatting rules from my university. Roman numerals, spacing, citations in text and within the reference list — such a nightmare. It’s frankly amazing that any science gets published. %#&@$!

Cheers,