Could this be the 1 in 18 vintages?

A week ago our temperatures dropped from a balmy 12 degrees C to -16 degrees C at By Chadsey’s Cairns Winery, and so did some of my optimism.
Although we bury renewal canes every fall to ensure bud survival over the winter (and hence grape clusters for next year’s vintage), by the end of February I found myself hoping we could salvage last year’s vines, which are still clinging to trellis wires and, apart from some pruning, are ready to go.
So I cut off some of those canes that are exposed above ground and happily discovered that 100% of the buds were still vibrantly intact showing a bright green when sliced open. Unfortunately March decided to be colder than February, capped off by this delightful winter storm today.
When they last checked the winter resiliency of County vines at the beginning of March, cool-climate scientists determined it would take a dip to -19 degrees C for the vines to suffer 10% damage of the fruiting buds.
As prolonged as this last cold blast has been, it has never gotten close to -19 C in vineyards–so we may still be safe.
So, with my usual farmer trepidation, I will re-check samples of Riesling, Gewurztramier and Chardonnay tomorrow.
If the buds have survived at higher rates than we regularly see compared to the buried canes (buds always take a slight hit when they spend the winter underground), then we will change our pruning this spring and keep as many of the above the ground canes as possible. All other factors in the rest of the season being equal, those canes should produce about 1.5 times the fruit of the buried canes.
This will be only the second time in our 18 years of growing grapes in the County when we have been able to use exposed canes.
A little excited but prepared to find the buds less fertile than I hope, I will report back at the end of the week. It takes 2.5 -3 days of warm indoor temperatures for the truth to be revealed.