Following the 2026 Growing Season
As spring settles into Napa Valley, our vineyards enter one of the most important (and fleeting) stages of the growing season: flowering. For just a brief window each year (seriously—don’t blink or you’ll miss it), tiny white blossoms appear on the grapevines, setting the foundation for the vintage ahead. Flowering is one of the earliest indicators of how the growing season may unfold.
But before the vines reach this stage, they have already gone through months of transformation.
The vineyard cycle begins in winter, when grapevines become dormant after harvest. During January and February, our vineyard crew spends long days pruning the vines by hand, cutting back last season’s growth and shaping the vine for the season to come. This careful work helps determine the balance and quality of the fruit each vine will eventually produce.
Following a winter of welcomed rainfall across Napa Valley, the 2026 growing season began with early bud break on our Cabernet Franc vines in the northern part of our Oakville vineyard during the first week of March. From there, growth accelerated almost daily. Leaves unfurled, shoots stretched toward the sun, and the vineyard canopy quickly filled in, bringing vibrant green back to the valley.
As the vineyard came to life, our team moved carefully through the rows once again, this time guiding green shoots between the wires of the vineyard rows in a process called vertical shoot positioning and removing excess growth from the trunk and fruiting zone of the vine by hand, a practice known as suckering.
Then comes flowering.
We saw our first blooms in mid-April—which our Winemaker, Natalie Bath, compares to the timing of the 2013 and 2015 vintages. She remains optimistic about the season ahead, even with the significant rainfall Napa Valley experienced during bloom.
Natalie says, “Flowering is one of the most hopeful times of year in the vineyard because you start to see the potential of the vintage take shape.”
For winemakers and vineyard teams, flowering offers one of the first real glimpses into the season ahead. Once the first blooms appear, harvest is typically just 100–120 days away. The vintage begins to feel tangible at this stage—another growing season quickly taking shape across Napa Valley, one small bloom at a time.
