Unseasonably warm weather this past winter has brought a bigger than usual crowd out for wine tastings at Virginia wineries. There is bad news for these local attractions. Up and down temperatures are not as good for the grapes.

Herelyn Lee and her husband did some wine tasting on Wednesday afternoon even though they're vacation in Massanutten.

"Well I'm sure if there would've been more snow on the mountain, we probably would've enjoyed one more day of skiing today, but decided we didn't want to ski in slush today, so here we are," said visitor Lee.

It was so nice outside on Wednesday afternoon that visitors could even do their wine tasting outside. Even though the pleasant temperatures are bringing in more business, a winemaker said too much warm weather is actually bad for the grapes.

"Should you actually have buds coming out and you get a cold-snap afterwards, then you could actually have big problems," said Cross Key's winemaker, Stephan Heyns.

He said that if the warm weather causes the grapes to bud early and then it gets cold again, the crops could die.

"All the buds get killed, so you have no new chutes coming out for this year's harvest, so you have no fruit, so therefore you'd have to buy new fruit from somewhere else and you still have your running cost of the vineyard so it becomes a little bit more costly."

As for right now, the grapes are fine.

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