A cool, wet start to the growing season contributed to a delayed harvest and a very large crop. An unseasonably warm October both rescued the vintage and resulted in high quality.

Longtime Yakima Valley and Red Mountain grower Dick Boushey succinctly sums up the 2022 growing season in Washington. “We had three extremes,” Boushey says. “We had the coldest spring, we had some tremendous heat in the middle, and then we were saved by the warmest October ever.”

A cool start to the season

After a cold, wet winter, the growing season in the state began ominously. Buds started to break in late March/beginning of April for early varieties, somewhat early but by no means unprecedented in recent years. Then came a blizzard April 11th through 13th, the likes of which eastern Washington has seldom seen that time of year. In addition to record snowfall in some areas and 40 mile-per-hour winds, temperatures dipped into the mid-20s.

“I had never seen snow with my wind machines running,” says Boushey. The snow melted quickly, but the cold temperatures had their effect.

“We had a lot of primaries that were damaged,” says Kendall Mix, winemaker at Milbrandt Vineyards and Wahluke Wine Company, which works with vineyards in Ancient Lakes, Wahluke Slope, and Yakima Valley. Chardonnay and other early budding varieties were particularly impacted.

Quite cool weather followed. Buds that were swelling or had started to break at times did not finish doing so for as much as three weeks. This led to an extended bud break that ultimately was two to three weeks behind recent years. The snow, combined with the wet winter, also resulted in an odd mixture in the vineyard.

“It led to the vines having a lot of growth and a lot of growing points on it,” says Lacey Lybeck, vineyard manager at Sagemoor Vineyards, which farms in the White Bluffs, Wahluke Slope, and Walla Walla Valley. This contributed to significant variability within blocks, with a mixture of primary, secondary, and, in some cases, even tertiary buds.

Hoping for a fruitful year

“That’s nothing short of impossible,” says Johnson. “It was the impossible vintage.”

Photos by Richard Duval. Images of Growing Degree Days by Washington State University.