Our Saijo kicked the bucket, too—dead to the (low) graft, in a semi-protected area on a southern slope. (EDIT: This is 6b Kentucky.) It grew beautifully last season (its second one here), showed no signs of sickness—and the winter lows weren’t too bad: I think we got down to 2 or 3F once, but that was the worst of it. I’m getting ready to try reworking the virginiana rootstock over to JT-02.
Ichi-ki-kei-jiro in the same location did fine: no damage and is now waking up. A little higher graft than Saijo—maybe 10" or so. Nikita’s Gift and Rosseyanka, in a more exposed location, also look good. They took some damage last year–Nikita in particular—but from a late spring freeze and not winter. Fortunately, the spring freezes weren’t too bad this year. My Rosseyanka has had some leaf and stem anthracnose that I think may have been aggravated by late freeze damage. I sprayed oil and copper—dormant and delayed dormant—this spring, so we’ll see how that goes this time.