LORENA, Texas — July is set to be the hottest month on record across the world and Texans sure are feeling it and so are the crops.
Vineyard owners are in a constant battle with this year's sweltering summer.
Country Spring Vineyard and Wine Garden is one of the several vineyards across Texas that's working hard to battle the challenges that come the heat.
The owners of the Lorena vineyard, Curtis and Mary Timmons, tell 6 News the heat can make it difficult to see their efforts come into fruition.
"Every year is a stress summer," Curtis said. "This year everything ripens up quickly because it's so hot and so you have to anticipate when your readings on the grapes are just right and once you get them right you have to be ready to pick."
Curtis loves taking care of the 3,000 vines he has on his property, but he's had to adjust to mother nature. He has learned installing an underground irrigation system on his vineyard helps with how dry and hot it can get in Texas.
"[The water] doesn't go to evaporation, it doesn't go to heat loss and so we save all the water that we can," Curtis explained. "Water conservation is more important every year out here."
His vines are demanding two gallons every three days during the sweltering Texas heat wave. He has to closely monitor the crops' needs otherwise grapes can shrivel and there can be further issues too.
"They become overripe, very quickly, and then it's not suitable for wine," Curtis said about the grapes in the heat.
The job for the wine marker, Mary, gets a little more complicated when it's super hot. She said grapes are still getting good sweet flavor still, but they don't always develop the right balance to make a good wine.
"It just makes it for some big challenges and you're just pulling out every resource you can find hoping that a few months from now you got something decent to put into a bottle," Mary explained.
Mary said pH levels and acidity levels is what can be challenging to find when the heat makes grapes ripe to fast. In the wine making process she'll have to get crafty to make sure she can make the grapes harvested into a nice bottle of wine.
This is agriculture, we're farmers, we don't have control over the weather and it's hard," Mary said "In these hot summers like this or in droughts or even the times when there's too much rain it's just a lot of work to manage all of that."
It's not a challenge the Timmons aren't used to, as they have had to adapt to mother nature for 10 years on the vineyard.
The Timmons won't know the exact impact of this summer's heat until about a year from now when they go to bottle the wines.