‘Never seen anything like this’: Late-season frost devastates Maryland wineries

Christopher Wilt didn’t realize he had failed to save the harvest at his Westminster winery until frost fogged the windshield of his golf cart at 5 a.m. Tuesday.

“I was in a kind of fugue state,” he said of lighting fire after fire across four acres of Esmé Vineyards to try and ward the cold away from his budding vines.

Vineyards across Maryland faced piercing cold Tuesday morning in what winery owners are calling one of the most devastating late-season frosts to hit the state. The April freeze came just as grape buds were beginning to sprout after an early, uncharacteristically warm pre-harvest season. Farmers expecting a lucrative summer are now grappling with the prospect of unprecedented revenue loss from the damage, just as the state’s wineries were seeing a boom.

“To watch everything get colder and colder, you know you’re fighting against something that’s much bigger than you,” Wilt said. “It’s like an ant kicking an elephant.”

His fairly new winery is one of several managed by Black Ankle Vineyards in Mount Airy, all of which lost 100% of their buds for grapes — over 100 acres in total — due to the frost. The cold snap that only lasted a few hours dropped temperatures to the mid-20s, about 10 degrees lower than the initial forecast, according to Black Ankle communications manager Emma Pope.

The company projects about $10 million in lost revenue from the roughly 20,000 cases of wine it will not produce, Pope said. There’s still wine to sell from previous years, but they don’t expect operations to return to normal until 2029. There is a lot of work to be done until then, including dipping into reserves of stored bottles and operating the vineyard without the 30 laborers they can no longer justify hiring. Black Ankle will also need to look for other wines to blend with what is left of their product — a practice they never considered in their over 20-year history, but are now toying with to help bolster supply.

“We have never seen anything like this,” Pope said. “But I do have full faith that we can come back.”

Loew Vineyards owner and Maryland Wineries Association Vice President Rachel Lipman also lost all of her vineyard’s new buds in the frost. She said the weather will likely lead to a multimillion-dollar loss for Maryland wineries. Much of the impact will be felt in the coming years, when vineyards start to dip into their 2026 vintages and feel the loss in inventory. “In the next year we might not have white wine to sell,” she said of Loew.

Frosts are not new to the wine industry, and each vineyard has its own protocols for preserving crops through unexpected weather patterns. In 2013, a frost stole 30% of Black Ankle’s harvest, but they saved vines by using frost drains, machines that break up cold air with fans.

At Boordy Vineyards in Hydes, staff apply potassium and copper to preserve vines. But when that didn’t work on Tuesday, they lit fires at 3 a.m. and hired a helicopter to fly laps over their South Mountain Vineyard to mix the air, according to a Facebook post.

“In the end, we managed to save a block of chardonnay and a portion of our albarino at the highest elevation, while everything else was scorched by cold,” the post said.

Jeff Lund, sales director of Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard, said he tried to burn wood on Tuesday to protect the vines, but it was soggy from a recent rain. He turned to the “frost dragon” — a propane cannon connected to the back of a tractor to blast heat into the air — and also sprayed potassium on the vines and mowed the grass very low, but he was only expecting temperatures to drop by a degree or two.

“Every year there’s at least one scare,” he said. “A lot of times it barely hits freezing.”

What set this new cold front apart is how pervasive it became, Lund said, impacting almost every winery in the state to a severe degree: “That is pretty uncommon.”

While he hasn’t quantified the damage yet, Lund said the most impacted varieties appeared to be pinot grigio, chardonnay, merlot and cabernet franc. He is considering mixing wines to produce more rosé to try and cover the loss of his white wines.

Lund is also keeping a watchful eye on his wholesale business, which makes up 10% of Sugarloaf Mountain’s revenue, as delivering to the nearly 100 restaurants and wine shops across Maryland he usually supplies will be a challenge this year. A spot on a restaurant menu is hard to get back, he said, so filling those demands will come first.

It’s an unfortunate situation for an industry that’s seen remarkable growth in the state. Lund said that when he first opened 20 years ago, he was one of about 13 wineries in Maryland. That number has grown to over 100, according to Joseph Fiola, a specialist in viticulture with the University of Maryland Extension. Fiola said the state has come a long way in learning what varieties work, though the margin for error among Maryland winemakers is still very slim due to the state’s shorter, less predictable seasons than on the West Coast.

While the impact of the frost is still unclear, Fiola said to expect an increase in Maryland wine prices and a major drop in the amount of local wine available in the next year or so.

“This setback follows decades of growth and innovation that have elevated Maryland’s reputation as a nationally recognized wine producer,” the Maryland Department of Agriculture said in a statement Wednesday. “For many growers, this marks their first experience with a frost event of this magnitude.”

There will be funding to assist winemakers through this loss, but not for everyone. Black Ankle Vineyards general manager Melissa Schulte said while some insurances can reimburse vineyards for vine death, this frost killed Black Ankle’s grape buds and not the vines, making it ineligible.

“People are quick to see wine as a luxury,” Pope said. “But it all starts with a farm.”