A long time coming.

My interest in wine started about 15 years ago in Oneonta, New York. I visited the local wine shop regularly and worked my way through regions and vintages, learning that I have a soft spot for deep reds: Zinfandel, Syrah, and Malbec.

I’m a meteorologist, so it was hard not to wonder about the weather behind those bottles. What did the growing season look like? How did it compare with other years? I wanted a site where I could explore those questions.

I tried to build it several times, but after a day of coding and working with weather data, I didn’t have the mental energy to devote to Weather & Vines.

Then along came AI.

I had 15 years’ worth of ideas and finally a way to implement them without hiring a team of dedicated developers.

This website is my biggest experiment with AI, and I’ve really enjoyed the process. I direct the work, working through the list of ideas I’ve been collecting. AI writes all of this site’s code, backend and frontend. Together, my “intern” and I have accomplished what I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

We won’t get everything right, but I hope the atlas is accurate and complete enough to offer an enjoyable starting point for exploring weather and wine. If you are especially data sensitive, I recommend reading about the atlas’s data sources and limitations.

I hope you enjoy exploring it as much as I’ve enjoyed creating it. Please let me know what you think. I’ll consider every suggestion. Together, we can build an authoritative atlas.

Kyle

Weather is one part of a wine’s story. Read about the atlas’s scope and limitations.