North Carolina faces some unique challenges when it comes to growing winegrapes. Because of the extreme fluctuations in Springtime temperatures, sometimes the grapes start to grow and then we have a frost. Frost can kill an entire crop very quickly. The higher off the ground the grapes are grown, the less chance there is that the frost will affect the budding vines. We also have Pierce's Disease, a bacteria which clogs the vascular system of the grape. Vines are sterilized from this disease when winter temps are consistently cold. Because NC no longer experiences this, the disease has crept up from the South and infects our Grapevines as well as other host species in the surrounding environment. Finally, it is very humid in NC and fungi are the biggest pests that we deal with in the vineyard. We only grow varieties which have natural disease resistance to things like Downy Mildew, Powdery Mildew, and Botrytis.