Abacela Vintage 2025 – Flowering

Weather and Climate

Spring 2025 brought a whiplash from a very wet and moderately cool February and March to warm and extremely dry conditions in April, May, and the beginning of June. Since the beginning of April temperatures in the western US have been largely warmer than normal running mostly 0.5 to 2.5 degrees above the average during 1991-2020. A few areas across the central Cascades in Oregon, northern Cascades in Washington, and Four Corners region have been the exception, experiencing temperatures that have been near average to 3 degrees below average. In terms of precipitation, the majority of the western US has been much drier than average since the beginning of April, except for portions of the southwest where isolated storms brought significant spring rain to the region.

The Umpqua Valley has seen a largely warmer than average vintage to date with temperatures in Roseburg running nearly 4 degrees above its long-term average. For the water year (October 2024 to June 2025), the Umpqua Valley has seen 5-15% of average precipitation, but it has slowed to very little in April, May, and June (nearly 4 inches below average).

Since the start of April Abacela has experienced temperatures roughly 4 degrees warmer than average (Figure 1). Abacela has also already seen four days over 90 degrees since the start of the vintage. Growing degree days are currently running 40% higher than the average during 1991-2020 and nearly 21% higher than the 2024 vintage on the same date. For precipitation, since the beginning of April Abacela has received only 1.15” of rain, significantly lower than average for this time of year.

Phenology

Abacela tracks phenology, important grapevine growth stages, by block and variety each year. The longest term data that we have comes from eleven variety/block combinations which include Tempranillo, Syrah, Malbec, Merlot, and Albariño. These observations started in 1997 for Tempranillo and Syrah with the others added to the observations over time with all eleven combinations observed since 2010.

The 2025 flowering at Abacela started with Malbec on June 3rd and Albariño on June 4th, averaging June 6th across our main varieties (Figure 1). The 2025 vintage flowering is six days earlier than our long-term average of June 12th, making up growth timing even with a five days later than average bud break. Warm and dry conditions have required some early season irrigation management resulting in vines that have healthy canopies and appear to be carrying a nice crop. From now on the vines will be putting energy into canopy and berry development resulting in the next main phenological stage, véraison or the softening of the berries, change in color, and sugar accumulation beginning period. We would expect véraison to occur by August 15th on average.


Figure 1 – Weather and phenological observations for Abacela from January through early June 2025. Daily maximum and minimum temperatures are shown in red and light blue, respectively, with extremes of days over 100°F or below 32°F indicated by the sun and ice crystal symbols. Daily precipitation is in a darker blue bar with days receiving greater than 0.5” of rain indicated with a raindrop. The weather data comes from our main weather station on Cobblestone Hill. The phenological events and days between events come from an eleven variety/block combination of Tempranillo, Syrah, Malbec, Merlot, and Albariño.