In northern cold climate conditions, chilling requirement fulfillment in dormant grapevine buds is slowed or stopped by subzero temperatures impacting the transcriptional processes needed to complete chilling requirement. Cabernet Franc and Reisling in Geneva, NY were used to determine the impact of natural oscillating temperatures on grapevine bud transcriptional activity during light and dark periods of a two-week period in January with fluctuating diurnal winter temperatures. Cabernet Franc and Reisling bud samples were collected at 32 time points during the natural vineyard temperature cycle at 6:00 (dark), 14:00 (light) and 18:00 (dark) hours) to monitor gene expression in consecutive freezing and non-freezing temperature oscillations. Genotype, light and dark, and temperature oscillations conditions were explored.