The harvest is complete and the last grapes delivered to the crush pad are fermenting into wine. White Birch Vineyards' grape vines did well this growing season, despite the extreme cold temperature reached last February. The 2016 growing season was the driest and third warmest on record in the Finger Lakes.  The heat and dryness helped ripen the fruit extremely well, resulting in less acid and more sugar than average. Towards the end of the growing season, we received approximately 6 inches of rain over 2.5 days to make up for the months of dry weather. That much rain in one event totally saturated the ground, making the rest of the season's tasks a bit more challenging. Our current task is preparing the fruitful canes for protection from the cold. We prune canes after harvest and connect them to a wire on the ground and then cover them with soil. In most growing regions the task of pruning is done in late winter or early spring if there is a chance of damage to the buds. More fall pictures in the vineyard to come...