Good news for me. I don’t need another “vintage of the century” after the 4 last decade.
Heard a lot of comparisons to 2015 in Napa a couple weeks ago. Happy for them to just simply have sound fruit, so obviously I didn’t bring up that 2015 is probably my least favorite of the 10s (including 11 and 17). Maybe the 15s will settle in eventually … but just way too flabby right now.
I read an article where it’s been the worst growth for Champagne in the last 40 years.
G. Shields’ description in post #11 corresponds well with what we were being told.
Champagne should be interesting this year. Overall yields are down a lot due to the large amount of damage from frost in the spring and then rot/mildew in the summer. Add in the normal hail damage that some vineyards saw and some sun burn damage too and you have quite a few folks who are only going to harvest 30-40% of the allowable yield let alone what they normally might be able to do. Some areas were hit very hard. For example, I am a big fan of Pinot Meunier from the Ardre Valley and this area was devestated both in quantity and quality.
The declared 2021 Champagne yield was 10,000 kg/ha with the ability to harvest another 3,100 kg/ha for reserves, but the reality is that 10,000 kg/ha is going to be the outlier high yield especially from producers who were selective. I’ve heard talk of a regional average somewhere between 6,000 kg/ha and 7,000 kg/ha.
From the folks I have talked to, after the rough growing season, the harvest was difficult due to uneven ripening and rigorous selection was necessary, but the healthy grapes show good promise. The question comes down to how many healthy grapes you can get. For the smaller producers, some have healthy vineyards with good quality and quantity and others do not have much of anything. There is the potential for some very nice vintage wines dedicated to specific plots/areas/holdings. The larger producers have a bit more of a challenge as it will be hard to make a larger volume vintage wine in quantity and quality in 2021 - especially when you need to keep your NV wines flowing and at a consistent level of quality. Reserves are really going to come into play.
As for the quality of the clean, ripe grapes, I have been told the wines are clean, fresh and have a character associated with harvests that typically happen a bit later in September or early October. Bright acidity is present and ripeness is more in the background when compared to many recent vintages. Again, this is early feedback based on a few folks so much more is still to be learned.
Quality-wise Champagne will be okay as the 2018-2020 run of vintages have the cellars stocked with nice juice and good reserves from the plentiful 2018 harvest (which cleaned out the poorer reserves like those from 2017). The issue will be with quantity after the smaller 2020 harvest (mostly economic impact) and now the smaller 2021 (mother nature impact). With sales recovering, this could affect supply and demand. We will have to see. Champagne can’t seem to break from its peak and valley cycle with proper planning. It always makes too much when times are good and too little when times are bad. For a quick turn wine, this might work, but not when you are making something that won’t be released for a number of years.
Moving forward, as a way to try and better balance these difficult years, Champagne is looking at a way for growers to exchange grapes between vineyards. You always have years where one grower might have a bountiful harvest with yield well above the limit and another grower might have almost nothing. Legally, you can’t really remedy that easily right now. There is talk of legislation where one grower’s excess could legally transfer over to another grower who lacks yield. Obviously this doesn’t take quality into account, but it is a common sense approach to things.
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would be bad for consumer unless limits were set. One grower could have a billion hl/ha and others zero and spread his/her dilute juice around.
Alan,
A lot of things already happen with going above the yield that shouldn’t. At least this would bring some sort of oversight into it. Most quality growers are only going to take quality grapes. Growers who don’t care about their own grapes are not likely to care about anyone else’s either. Most bad small producer wine never leaves the region so it won’t have much affect on what we drink. More than anything, it would give an extra legal choice to folks. There have been many years when there has been excess quality grapes far beyond the legal yield - sometimes double or even triple (2004 and 2018 come to mind).
You also have the minor case where some folks simply steal from other’s vineyards to make up for quantity. Some of the growers who harvest late in the season have to contend with folks swiping their grapes during the early and mid parts of the harvest.
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One of my favorite Jura producers just released some of their 19’s and 20’s. And the prices were up 20-30% due to the domaine having lost most of their 2021 haverst. I am pretty sure that the prices for those wines won’t ever move backwards again. So i am a bit afraid of 2021 being a year that will accelerate the already increasing prices on some of my favorite wineries around Europe.
In Portugal, a relatively cool and prolonged growing season. Optimism was high but rains have started the past several weeks. Some regions did well, the rain was brief and was more refreshing than a problem. Herdade do Mouchao thinks it will be a very, very good harvest. The Dao was mainly happy as well. In the Douro, the rains were prolonged, cool weather did not allow for good drying of the fruit. Those who harvested early will make some very good table wines. Port, however, needs more ripening. Earlier, expectations were for another 2011, but now, it probably won’t be a generally declared harvest.
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In case anyone cares, harvest down here in Santa Barbara County has been going pretty well. But we are very very far from being finished. Most Rhone reds have not been picked yet and most likely will be picked over the next 4 to 6 weeks, depending upon variety and sight.
Pinot is almost all in but not quite yet. Yields are down but most winemakers seem to be pretty happy. . .
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Going to be tough to frame 2021 with broad strokes. Many different stories will be told. Lots of late season heat with very little water. Crops in MOST areas were off a little or a lot.
Pretty small clusters for us, so yields are low to ok. Quality is very good, we have a cool finish to August and good weather in September.
We picked from September 12th until today(Temperance Hill Chardonnay). So early but not crazy by any stretch. Some folks picked early but I don’t think the Brix boogeyman some were concerned about ever showed up. Our final Pinot Noir picks came in on Sept 27th with 22.6 and 22.7 for Brix(22.7 was the high for the year). Early looks at the first ferments show alcohols in the 12.4-13.4 range. Very good density, skins were very thick, and gallons/ton are about normal. Acids are excellent.
Ferments have been smooth sailing and it looks to be a very solid vintage for both white and red wines(pending another 20 months where nothing goes wrong). Just not really very much of it.
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Thanks for that Marcus. We should have your post “pinned” for when the board pundits condemn 2021 as a “solar” vintage without having tasted the wines.
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sounds promising!
I heard a little bit of chatter regarding some mildew pressure on grapes that were picked a little later this year. did you see much of this?
Always a good time of the year to read Bill Nanson’s excellent www.burgundy-report.com for the news out of Burgundy. Looks like a pretty difficult vintage.
Mildew? No, we didn’t see any at all. Or botrytis either, as the later picks hung through some moisture. But nights have been cold, and fruit all came in extremely clean.
While there was a very brief(compared to normal) week of pressure early in the growing season, this has been one of the lowest years for mildew pressure at our sites.
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Sounds like my soon-to-be-born baby daughter will be getting Goodfellow for her birth year wines! ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Her big sis ('19) will have to settle for the French stuff (but some Goodfellow too).
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The quirkiest thing about this vintage, IMO, is how dry it was. Very little rainfall in April and May, set up a long dry haul for the vines and the driest I have seen the topsoils here in 20 years(when I first began looking).
Our canopies are smaller, and fruit was exposed to lots of sun this year. Skins are dark and dense, though at the end of ferment Whistling Ridge is red hued as always.
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Last pick is tomorrow. A weird, cold, Eastern side of the valley section of Sauvignon Blanc. Last Pinot pick was 10/01 and that was 2 blocks that are also odd ducks. We were done on 09/26 prior to that.
Most people will think we’re liars. Lower than expected sugars and pretty firm (not high but higher than you would think) acids. Yields, in my world, were pretty high. I have a lot of wine. But I’m also spread out more than the average winery.
I think the wines are good but it’s super early. Generally the later stuff is the best stuff and I still have stuff in early to mid-ferment.
It is not what people would expect reading weather reports. Can’t really explain it. Super healthy and outrageously foamy fermentations! I think there will be a lot of great wines and, at worst, a super high floor on the normale wine.
Expecting excellence from the Tempranillo rose’!