Flowering

The process that occurs each spring (May in the Northern Hemisphere) when grapevine shoots lengthen, bud and blossom into tiny white flowers. Flowering is critical, for only those flowers that become pollinated and “set” on the cluster become individual grape berries. As crucial as it is, set is an extremely fragile phenomenon. Even under favorable climatic conditions, up to 85 percent of a vine’s flowers never set at all and are destined to die as “shatter.”