We finished up the pruning and staking of the vines in two days. Alex did the older vines and I did all the rest. My take on how the vines are doing is that the Solaris are delivering mixed results - some vines are very vigorous and others are weak. I don't know if this is normal, or if some are being subjected to conditions they don't tolerate well, like drowning in areas of poor drainage. The Chardonnay vines are also mixed -- some doing well, others weak and one possibly dead. The Pinot are doing surprisingly well and the Albarino surprisingly poorly. I would have expected the opposite.
Our weather has been alternating between beautiful but cold, and horrible but warm. As tomorrow is the last day of January, I'll look at the weather stats for January next week. Let's now look at 2020 as a year, a horrible pandemic coronavirus year that ended with horrible US election angst. At least now things have settled down in that latter corner and vaccines have arrived.
The December climate report shows the month was cooler, wetter and windier than average. And our area had significant outliers:
- Highest daily rainfall: 27.5 mm at Newport, Co Mayo (15% of its monthly LTA) on Sun 13th
- Lowest mean monthly temperature: 4.3°C at Knock Airport, Co Mayo (at its LTA) (its coldest December since 2010)
- Lowest monthly total sunshine: 31.2 hrs (daily mean 1.01 hrs/day) at Belmullet*, Co Mayo
Overall, 2020 gave us above average rainfall, temperatures and sunshine as a nation, but that was mainly in the south and east. Our area again showed outliers:
- Highest annual total rainfall: 2051.7 mm at Newport, Co Mayo (128% of its LTA)
- Lowest mean annual temperature: 8.9°C at Knock Airport, Co Mayo (0.4 above its LTA)
- Highest air temperature: 27.1°C at Newport, Co Mayo on Mon 1st June
- Lowest annual total sunshine: 1252.0 hrs (daily mean 3.42 hrs/day) at Belmullet*, Co Mayo
*Sunshine data is from the Autosol Network. LTAs for these sites
are currently not used for comparison purposes.
We also endured eight named storms and five months with storm force winds recorded. What this means for viticulture only time will tell. At least now we have our horticultural food and research (HFR) number. The research is well underway.
