As is for this time of year, the vines are waking up from their period of winter dormancy, and starting to push new growth. This begins the annual new cycle of growth and marks the true start of the 2025 vintage. We at Sierra Vista believe in getting our all of our cane pruning done as early as possible so as to ensure even if the vines were to have an early season bud break all energy is sent to new growth. As we finished all of our pruning in early March the next task at hand is to mow with our flail mower all of last year canes. This shreds the previous years canes into a mulch that adds organic matter and nutrients back into the soil year after year. Once the first mowing has taken place, we start to assess the state our or cover crops that grow in between the vineyard rows, and decide if we want to reseed our cover crop or are happy with the cover crop that has seeded itself from the previous year. While all this is happening, we eagerly watch for bud break day by day. Per our usual pattern we are seeing bud break starting in the Chardonnay and progressing block by block. During this time of early growth, the vines are very susceptible to frost damage, though we have not seen any as of yet this year (fingers crossed). With the mild to cooler temperatures we are experiencing we expect to see a slower process of bud break lingering through the end of April, and by May the new growth on the vines will one to two feet tall, and ready for the summer growing season.