Vintage Summaries

Patience Rewards

Climate is what you plan for and weather is what you get. However with climate change we no longer know how to plan. 2021 may be our first climate change vintage. Weather events are what define a vintage. A decade ago climate scientists predicted certain trends for the changes in the mid-Atlantic. They all occurred in 2021.

Resilience

The weather extremes of vintage 2020 seemed to reflect ongoing Covid ups and downs. A tricky vintage to navigate, but not without rewards.

Adapting to a Warmer Climate

2019 was a very strong vintage for both whites and reds. Yields were down as some varieties recovered from rainy 2018.

A Soggy Slog

2018 was with wettest year ever recorded in this area. Much of that rain fell during the growing season. To say the vintage was challenging would be an understatement. It was the most difficult year I have experienced in growing grapes in Virginia since 1981. Facing reality by strategically “punting” was the best way to approach growing and winemaking decisions. The result: light, pretty, quaffable white and rosé wines with no red wines produced for vintage 2018.

The rains that never fell

Late winter brought an unsettled warm/cold pattern that was concerning and reminiscent of the disastrous winter of 2014. Temperatures in February reached into the 80s with cherry and peach trees blooming. A few nights in March dropped to the teens. However, fears of trunk and vascular damage proved to be unfounded. Spring still came in a full ten days early, but there were no damaging frost events.

2016 was a good year for white wines and an outstanding year for red wines. A somewhat uneventful winter gave way to a warm, dry March that stimulated an early bud swell.    

With a few caveats, 2015 was an excellent year for both white and red wines.    

Climate is what you plan for and weather is what you get. This is why the somewhat unremarkable 2014 growing season was so good: we got what we planned for.    

2013 was a difficult growing season that metamorphosed into a fabulous fall harvest.    

2012 was back to some welcome degree of normalcy after the freakishly hot and dry 2010 and the rain soaked September of 2011.    

The majority of the growing season of 2011 was close to perfect with dry, warm conditions all summer.    

2010 was a good year for whites and an outstanding year for reds. The winter was the snowiest since the mid-1990s with as much as 3 feet of snow on the ground.    

I can best categorize the 2009 growing season at Linden as “uncommonly lucky.”    

The 2008 growing season at Linden Vineyards was one of great challenges and windows of opportunities.    

2007 was a very good year for whites and an outstanding year for reds.    

2006 was a good year at Linden. I would have to characterize the vintage as “classic” in that the growing season was about as close to typical as is possible.    

2005 was an outstanding year for whites and a good year for reds. The vintage started very slowly with a very cool spring, delaying bud break several weeks past normal.      

2004 can best be categorized as a roller coaster vintage.    

A very difficult growing season. We suffered through cold, rain, lightning strikes, light hail, poor fruit set, windstorms, and a hurricane.