Missouri Vintner Speaks About the Spring Freeze

Early spring the temperature reached the balmy mid-sixties in Missouri. Thinking winter was over many gardeners sowed seeds and planted herbs and vegetable sprouts. Pale green shoots and leaves appeared on trees and bushes, and grass sprung from the warming ground. Then Mother Nature concocted a cruel joke. Temperatures plummeted to the low twenties during the night for five consecutive days. Daytime temperatures barely pushed in to the fifties. New growth shriveled, delicate young plants froze, and the halo of green on trees turned to browns and blacks.

The shock of the reversion to winter struck hard at the Missouri grapes important to the vintners and wine retailers in the state. Some vineyards sustained more damage then others. There was talk that most of the grape crop was destroyed or seriously damaged.

Visiting wineries and sampling their vintages is a favorite pursuit of lots of people in Missouri and from surrounding states. Summer music events are looked forward at many locations. Rumors started that Missouri wineries would not have product to sell to consumers.

I talked to Robert Mueller, the owner and vintner of Robller Vineyard Winery in New Haven, Missouri. Robller has been in business for nearly sixteen years. His wines have won bronze, silver and gold medals at state and national competitions. He put his vines in by hand and dotes over them every year.

Me: Tell us about the "freeze" and how it affected the vineyards in Missouri.

RM: Well, I can speak for our own. When the freeze hit we had five straight days of 20 degree weather that froze everything that was already out. The cane growth, two to three inches in our situation, died.

After a few weeks . . . we found a lot of green growth and a lot of fruit coming out. Budding that had not opened yet came out. Not necessarily the ones left on the pruned canes, but maybe from the cordons. They would not be quite as fruitful.

Me: Cordons? What are they?

RM: The cordon is a horizontal growth. The plant is T shaped. The vertical is a control, the part that grows horizontal on the wires are the cordons. The growth that comes off the cordons is known as the canes.