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.
Somebody needs to ask the media why they told us we have have a growing season “…now occurring nearly a month earlier than it did in the 1950s…” (How rising temperatures are altering Napa's wine-growing season - ABC News), then a month later report “…picking started a full month later this year…” (https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/wine/article/wine-late-harvest-18356088.php).
Hey Nate,
There are overall trends that can span decades, but each growing season has its own quirks.
From the folks I’ve spoken to in Sonoma County, the growing season began later compared to recent years, which many said was “more normal like the olden days.”
That said, with climate change, it’s difficult to assess what is normal/early/late these days!
It’s late but not the latest ever. I’m actually planning to write about this in my next winery newsletter as a part 1 as there is so much to this subject.
In about 3 decades of working with the same blocks at our vineyard, here’s the quick and dirty comparisons:
Old vine Zin, 2023 is nearly identical in harvest date and Brix at harvest to 1991 and 1992. Harvest date is very similar to 1993, 1998, 2010 and 2011. Crop level has varied a bit as well.
Chard was 2 days later in 1998 (granted, it was 2 Brix higher than we do now) and very similar to 2006, 2006, 2010 and 2011. I’ve only worked with this since 1997, though.
Cab harvest date is similar to 1998, 2003, and 2010-2012. My history with this also only starts in 1997, though.
I’ve noticed early during the ripening period in 2023 that Brix seemed to lag behind other objective measurements of ripeness as well as subjective assessments of ripeness. Once a very warm spell came, Brix ‘jumped’ to align with the other measurements.
Again, it’s one of the later harvests I’ve seen, but not unprecedented. My dad and Grandfather spoke of harvesting the Zin in late October multiple years when the vines were younger and more productive.
As long as there is not too much botrytis-favoring weather before a block is harvested, these are my favorite kinds of vintages in this area. Even in vintages where we have been pushed to pick earlier than planned for the health of the wine, I’ve been quite pleased with the outcome.
Roy Piper made a great video talking about Moulds in Oak Knoll and some of his general vintage thoughts. Looks like acids are relatively high. I’ve spoken to a few others and it looks like this will be a classically styled vintage. Sign me up!
Any worry about grapes not ripening enough?
For my Napa project we’re looking to pick Cabernet Sauvignon next week in Oak Knoll area. What a literally cool vintage for Napa fruit among other CA regions. Can’t wait!
Hey Fred, what are you seeing on malics? Most of the stuff I am seeing is still pretty high there. Not bad - just interesting.
Thanks for all the notes…
Adam Lee
Clarice Wine Company
Adam, I don’t run malics anymore. Sometimes I might put a spot of juice on the ML chromatography paper to see how large the malic spot is relative to tartaric (which is really important sometimes). But generally cool ripening seasons tend toward larger malic in the acid pool. And if there is an appley taste to the juice late into the ripening curve, I sense the malic is pretty significant.
1985 Mendocino Riesling, my first commercial wine as head winemaker had a pH of 2.73 and a TA of 14.3 at harvest. The malic was dominant and required a double-salt deacidification to bring things into a nice balance. I’ve not encountered a similar situation since. By the way, Jed Steele used to bring those Mendo Coastal Zins into a nice balance in those cold vintages with this procedure, which was his Masters Thesis at UCD.
I also kind of figure that the more water that moves thru the plant, the more K will exist in tissues and juice. So, a nice, wet prior winter with a lot of days on the vine, there should be a pretty significant pH shift upward during extraction of reds from that alone. Couple that with higher than typical malics and the pH shift after MLF in reds will probably be significant and surprising.
So, we ought to embrace the somewhat higher than normal total acidities at harvest, I think.
Vincent - do you have a sense of when you will release your cab?
This year is the first year I’ve done almost no lab work on the juice whatsoever. I have to say it’s really liberating and forces me to make decisions on taste of fruit alone. I crush/destem/whole cluster and then just measure sugar and that’s it. Don’t even check pH. If I know it’s a low retention sandy soil site I might just add a little nutrients, but that’s about it. And it saves me $2000+ in lab work costs as an extra bonus.