The sun has finally begun to periodically emerge. And on those days, clouds are puffy white and the sky is a brilliant blue. The dandelions begin taking over our lawns, maple trees shed their red bud covers, willow trees show the first new, soft green colors and everyone is out walking their dogs before the evenings turn chilly.

However, while we enjoy a respite from this past miserable winter, spring is a time of danger in the vineyards of northeast Ohio. When April brings too many warm and pretty days, it is a time when our growers fear tens of thousands of dollars in losses to spring frost.

We grow grapes in northeast Ohio, partly because Lake Erie provides cool breezes to retard early bud break in the spring. (If you left your house in the Youngstown-Warren areas any time recently and drove to Lake Erie to collect driftwood or sea glass along the shore, you would have seen a 10 to 20 degree difference between your backyard and the waters’ edge.) Those cold breezes off the near-freezing lake, are trapped by the high ridges just south of Interstate 90 (known as the Escarpment) and do their work by holding back bud break.

However, when the warm 70 degree days extend for a week or two, even chilly lake breezes are not enough to fully protect our vines. Buds swell, break through their protective covers and sap begins to run up the vines’ trunks.

This is when growers have those sleepless nights. For weeks on end, they get little rest when temperature-based alarms outside their windows, abruptly wake them, and into the darkness and cold, they head to the vineyards to protect their businesses.

When temperatures begin dropping toward the low 30s, growers will drag out prepositioned smudge pots and fire up the 30-plus giant wind machines in and around in the Grand River Valley to protect their vines. (On these nights, it truly sounds like scores of planes are landing at Laguardia Airport in New York!)

However, if temperatures then drop into the 20s, even with the machines and row-end fires, significant damage is bound to occur. Several years ago, after an inordinate, three-week warm spell in April, GRV growers lost tens of thousands of dollars to spring frost in just one night as the temperatures dipped to 21 degrees Fahrenheit before the sun rose.

What does all of this mean to the local wine community? First, our family wineries are fortunate that we sell wine and not just grapes. In years with great harvests like the 2024 and 2025, the 2026 vintage will be (despite some 2025 winter kill in less than ideal vineyard locations) generally good and the prior years’ fruit was of exceptional quality.

So, if Jack Frost does appear this spring, those last years of near record quality yields will carry many wineries through the year. Our growers will surely see significant financial losses, but we will have plenty of great wine to sell to wine lovers visiting this summer and fall.

So, as you enjoy the next few weeks of warming temperatures, keep an ear to the local weatherman’s reports and think about your local winegrowers when “possible frost” is predicted.

There will be a giant sigh of relief in the GRV about June 10, which is the traditional ‘all clear’ day for the threat of a killing frost. But that date is still weeks and weeks away.

For more information: dwinchell@Ohiowines.org