Wine blending exercises often evoke images of swirling wine glasses and discussions of nuanced aromas. The reality is a bit different. In commercial production blending, many blends must be made from a finite volume of components, and no one blend can be sacrificed for the quality of the others. In other words, allocating one wine component has ripple effects for every other blend you need to make. Therefore making blends one at a time is rather difficult. I've found making

A client vineyard in Northern Virginia suffered massive hail damage on May 14, affecting every vine. Shoots were broken off, leaves were punctured, and inflorescences (flower clusters) were torn away from shoots. These photos were taken about 42 hours after damage occurred. There was almost constant overcast and rain that week that delayed substantial vine growth after the hail event. Although hail is disconcerting any time during the growing season, early season damage is pr