Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, “…a well-drained vineyard…”  Well, our vineyard is draining like Niagara Falls today.

Two months of accumulated snow, ice and frosted soil are thawing big time, sheeting down the southwest-facing slope of the vineyard toward the Raritan River and finally the Atlantic Ocean, where it will evaporate into the atmosphere and then fall again as rain and snow, completing Nature’s miraculous cycle.

As I write this, it is 64F in the shade and easily 70F in the direct sunlight up in the vineyard, where the pruning crew has gone from wearing snow boots with gaiters and winter hats on Monday, to bare skin and sunglasses today.  This, of course, is why Agnieszka, our Vineyard Master, has such an awesome tan by summer’s end:  she starts working on it in February.

We know, of course, that this is just a tease, as February owes us two more weeks and March can deliver a winter wallop itself.  But as we finish pruning the Riesling vines today, I can almost smell the ripe yellow grapes that will hang in this very spot next autumn, soaking up the fading sunlight of 2011 just before harvest.