Hail

Well the good new is that the powdery mildew I reported a couple of weeks ago is under control and won’t be an issue at harvest.

The bad news is that we had a mighty thunderstorm last night. Hailstones the size of marbles absolutely thrashed down for about a minute. It breaks my heart to see what were perfect bunches now looking decidedly worse for wear. Now we really need a spell of warm, dry weather to desiccate the damaged berries and prevent rot from taking hold.

It could be worse. I have one small vineyard which escaped totally unscathed. And 2km north of here the destruction is total… i.e. no harvest this year.