Growers still have fruit hanging? Places two and 3 weeks behind?
I know a Sonoma producer just picked, lastest in their 20 year history. Maybe good for the acid driven crowd?
My buddy in OC that has a Merlot vineyard in his backyard is stuck at 19 brix. Said “we might just make rosé and say screw it”.
Definitely a more “classic” Napa vintage ahead. Good in my book, but it’ll be really interesting to see what the riper producers do with this crop, and also how the reviewers respond. I suspect for some, they’ll treat this like 2011 and we may end up seeing some excess inventories and price reductions, not to mention the general oversupply issues that are hitting many regions, including France and Spain.
Of course…many of those 2011 Napa wines are drinking beautifully today.
I’d be worried about cold climate vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains and stuff along the Sonoma coast.
If it doesn’t get ripe not much they can do except a trip to Costco for 50lbs bags of sugar.
BTW - 2011 California vintage is my favorite for Pinot Noir
Latest in recent memory, but I remember processing fruit in November of 2012 so this isn’t without precedent. And don’t get a real old head started, they’ll regale you with stories of Thanksgiving adjacent picks.
ETS Labs publishes aggregate data every day comparing real time numbers with the prior few vintages. Oddly enough, 2023 is tracking similiarly to 2018, albeit a little later calendar-wise.
On the lots I’ve seen, whether they be Rivers-Marie/William & Mary/other clients at places like Mending Wall - colors are fantastic and early ferments have great aromatics. I’m not good enough to see the future, but from here, it looks very promising.
I was hearing 23 was looking like 18. Seems like 23 should be a fantastic vintage.
Weather is still good, and relatively warm. No major precip on the horizon, probably all the way through October. I think 23 has a chance to be one kfmthe better vintages in a long time.
Definitely agree. Vintage of the decade? 
Think 21’ still has that honor.
It definitely does for now. I was making a joke as others had proclaimed 21 was vintage of the decade after 20 and 22 ha.
I thought these vintages of the decade were declared on 1/1.
The vintage reminds me of 2005. Generally a longer, cooler vintage but with somewhat larger yields. I like 2005s a lot - but think the wines would have been better (my own at least) with a little bit more concentration - so I am doing some small bleed offs this year. Acids are really good thus far on what I’ve brought in.
Adam Lee
Clarice Wine Company
Vintage of the century?
Of course. It must be.
Quite a few of my Santa Barbara picks are now well into Nov. I have picked Riesling from there first week of Nov before, so it’s not unprecedented, but this looks to be even later.
Interesting. I love cooler climate wines, but I generally hate the 2011 Northern CA Pinots.
There’s a lot of shitty 2011 Pinot! Berserker Bob lives!
1998 was one of the latest for me. Similar to this year: wet winter, cold wet late spring, late bloom dates, above average crop. We were drooping crop for weeks when we realized it was gonna be so late. One of the coolest summers ever and no indian summer either. We picked Cabernet at Eaglepoint on November 4th at like 22.4.
In 2011 we picked the Riverain Cab November 3, not ever looking to repeat that.
Seems the quality this year is very high. No mold, no pink berries, no sunburn, just clean fruit with long hang times.
From an email I received from @JeffEmery of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard on Sept 14:
“This is the latest harvest season I have ever seen. We haven’t seen a grape yet. Last year we were half way through our season at this date. In spite of the rest of the country burning up this summer we’ve been very, very cool out here on the coast. We only just dragged the grape processing equipment out yesterday just because we thought we should at least see if it is in working order for when we do finally get some grapes.”
From their Instagram, it looks like they’ve since brought in a harvest of Zin.
Yes, very late here in the Santa Cruz Mountains and great balance and acidity in the grapes. Finally saw my first fruit come in October 3rd. The second latest harvest of Santa Cruz Mountains AVA Pinot Noir since 1998, when that vintage of Pinot Noir was harvested on October 6th. These are the only two vintages we didn’t start until October in my 45 seasons. Going into this season I was worried about later ripening things like our Cabernet Sauvignon, but we just had three days of decent heat last week and things are coming up nicely. I expect to see our mountain Cabs come in within the next 10 days or so.
I wouldn’t call this a longer vintage though, as I’ve seen some write-ups suggest. We had such a long and late winter that many of our mountain vineyards didn’t even finish flowering until later June. I do think it will make excellent wine due to wonderful natural acidity not burning out with heat, but “hang-time” is not what is going on here, just a shift of the season by 4 to 6 weeks.