The season's harvest is quickly approaching, and so far, vineyards in the Valley have been set back by too much rain this year. Cross Keys Vineyards in Mount Crawford is feeling the downpour.

Rebecca Haushalter, Cross Keys Vineyard's Relations Manager, says, "Being a small winery, there's not a lot of precautions that you can do and so all you can do is bear it when you have the chance to go check everything out and see how much you did lose that day."

A late frost in the spring and a rare hail storm damaged a large percentage of Cross Keys' crop.

Haushalter says, "It will mean less profit. We are still going to have the quality versus the quantity of our grape production. Here we are looking at about 2,500 cases, versus the 3,500 that we were looking for."

Even with all the rain, Randy Phillips still feels that the Shenandoah Valley is the best place to grow his grapes.

Philips says, "We have had excessive moisture this year, not as much as other areas, but we compensate by that by doing more work in the vineyard."

Since there has been so much rain, some of the grapes that won't fully develop, fall to the ground. This allows the soil to soak up the nutrients of the fallen grapes while also giving the healthier grapes more room to grow.

Philips says, "About ten to 15 percent of our crop, we've actually dropped on the ground. Those are grapes that probably would not have ripened fully. For a vineyard of our size, for a winery of our size, it has to be about quality not about quantity."

The vineyards will begin to harvest the grapes in the next two to three weeks.