well underway as you can see from the photograph, but not all of the varieties are this advanced. It seems a long way from the vineyards in Hampshire being covered in snow not that long ago.

 At Beaulieu the Bacchus, which was planted about 5 years ago, is well advanced whereas some of the older vines, particularly those where we have pruned hard to get them back into shape, are a little behind. Everything is looking good though. 

Our main concern now is frost. With the buds open a hard frost can burn them off completely and result in a reduced or even totally lost crop. We have a fairly frost free site here at Marlings and since we have been here during the last 5 years we have not had any frost damage to the vines at all. Susceptibility to frost  is a very site specific thing. It not only depends on the macro scale i.e. latitude closeness to seas etc but also on the local specifics of frost hollows, prevailing winds, shelter, slope etc. I know that other vineyards in Hampshire have been hit quite badly with the recent cold nights, and have lost some of the buds. We installed a weather station in the vineyard in 2007 and have been recording the conditions every 30 minutes since then. In April & May 2009 the lowest temperature we have seen is -0.1 degrees C.

It is also the first year that we have accumulated any 'Degree Days' in April. A Degree Day can be defined in a number of ways but the method we use is 1 Degree Day = 1 day where the average temperature is 1 deg. C > 10 Deg. C. So if the temperature is 16 degrees C averaged over 24 hours that would count as 6 Degree Days. It is a standard method of measuring the days in which the vines will be growing and a summation of the heat they receive. Degree days for Marlings Vineyard were 889. To contrast  this take a look at the table below which shows approximate degree days for a few well known wine regions.