It’s almost that time of year!
Just came in my inbox:
In Napa Valley, some vintages breeze by with few hiccups. Throughout the growing season and harvest Mother Nature cooperates with the winegrowers’ wishes until the last grapes are safely in the winery. Then there are the years when Mother Nature is not so benign. Curve balls are thrown. These are the vintages that test the grower’s intellect, her experience, mettle and resolve. They are what Benoit calls “technical” vintages. Napa Valley’s 2022 vintage falls into this category.
It didn’t start out that way. Plentiful winter rains filled reservoirs and soaked deep into the soils, giving grapevines and their root systems a good start to the growing season. Vine canopies were healthy, an early heat spell passed quickly, and 2022 was lining up to be a classic year, much like 2018 or 2019. By late August, harvest was underway in some parts of the valley. Then came the forecast for a heat wave. A major one.
At Realm, we harvested sites that were ready, including Calistoga, Pritchard Hill and St. Helena. The grapes were fantastic, and while they could have gone a few days more, there was nothing to be gained by leaving them on the vine. In early September the heat arrived as predicted. For five days, from September 5th through the 10th, temperatures soared above 110°F throughout Napa. And not just in the northern reaches, where temperatures are often higher. At Farella Vineyard, in the “cool” Coombsville AVA, we had readings of 117°F. Everything we thought we knew about the warm and cool regions of Napa Valley was thrown out the window.
Benoit: “When temperatures reach above 95°F for an extended period of time, grapevines stop functioning. They essentially shut down and ripening comes to a halt. When you extend that for multiple days, it can be devastating for the crop if you’re not ready for it.”
Scott: “Here was the curve ball. A challenge – once again – to Realm’s resilience. But unlike the wildfires in 2017 and 2020, this was a situation we could prepare for. And we had. Napa Valley has always had heat waves, and with climate change we know they will likely be more common. So we’ve thought hard about how to mitigate heat and protect our fruit when these events come along.”
This is where Benoit’s term “technical” comes into play. That is, combining our experience and knowledge as winegrowers with technological tools we could only have dreamt of a couple decades ago.
One of these is the weather stations we’ve installed in our Estate vineyards. These sophisticated instruments provide us with climate data, in real-time, including rainfall, temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction as well as a crucial measurement known as Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD). In essence, VPD measures how much moisture is being leached out of a vine into the dry air. Ideally you want this number to be low, between .45 and 1.25, but in 2022 we saw this number go as high as 9.7 in one of our vineyards. Benoit has an alert set on his phone that notifies him when the VPD goes above 4; needless to say, his phone was pinging like crazy in September 2022.
Of course, acting on this data is up to us. When we learned about the upcoming heat wave, we quickly began an irrigation regime in each vineyard to ensure the vines could continue to draw water from their root systems.
Benoit: “The best scenario is to beat the heat by 2-3 days so the vines go into the event with water availability. When you irrigate, the plant opens its stomata (essentially the pores found in the leaves and stems) so that it can transpire. Vines need about two days to regulate themselves and find their rhythm and strength. In 2022, depending on the type of soil in each block, we irrigated anywhere from 6 to 24 hours.”
Once the heat spell arrived, however, it was the fruit clusters we needed to address, preventing, as best we could, the berries from becoming sunburned or shriveled. We’ve mentioned our misters before, overhead sprinklers that allow us to change the microclimate around the fruiting zone during heat events. In 2022 we practiced what we call pulsing, misting the vines for ten minutes every hour, which lowered the temperature around the fruit by as much as 10 degrees, reducing VPD and helping to minimize shriveling and sunburn. Misting, combined with healthy leaf canopies and shade cloths, helped us protect the integrity of the grapes to the degree possible.
And yet, 2022 was a year when we sorted fruit more aggressively than ever before. We discarded 30% of the grapes we harvested, the highest percentage of fruit we’ve ever left behind at the sorting table. Although we employed every tactic at our disposal to ensure sound fruit, some grapes were simply not up to our standards. We brooked no compromises, ruthlessly disposing of less-than-perfect berries. In the winery, we employed cool fermentations and gentle extraction techniques. While rumors of stuck fermentations and wines with high volatile acidity were heard around the valley, we were gratified that no such fate befell our wines.
On the cusp of their release two years later, we are immensely proud of our 2022 wines. We believe they are a testament to what Realm can achieve in even the most challenging years. Those harvested prior to September’s heat are breathtakingly expressive, vibrant and fresh. Those picked during and just after the heat, including To Kalon and Stags Leap, went through the most aggressive sorting, yielding wines both striking and elegant. Finally, wines harvested later in the season are classics, benefiting from long ripening in cooler weather, including a brief rain event that shifted the harvest into a more normal gear. For Realm, 2022 comprised essentially three harvests in one, each with its own set of rules and winemaking protocols. It kept us on our toes.
Scott: “As Napa Valley’s 2022 wines are released, we think people will see more variability than usual. Faced with nearly unprecedented heat, winegrowers made different choices about when to harvest and how to handle (and if or when to declassify) fruit when it arrived. These decisions led to more stylistic differences. While that makes overall pronouncements about the vintage difficult, it may be one of the more interesting vintages for consumers.”
Benoit: “Realm’s 2022 wines are less about power and density, and more about elegance, expressiveness and precision. They have a lot of personality and express the variation of our sites across the valley. The sense of place in these wines is crystal clear. We worked hard for this vintage, and I couldn’t be happier with what our team accomplished.”
. My cousin and his wife unexpectedly came over and their enjoyment definitely helped my cause.