Best Grapes Ever! What a great year for modern grapes in SW WA!

 Update: Harvest is complete. Only our Delicatessen hung through the 2 days of rain we just got (and desperately needed). Everything else was picked before the rains, with near-perfect wine chemistry and almost no bird loss. 

This is what I just wrote to a friend who's making a Leon Millot red wine from our grapes:

My 2021 Estate Red Batch #2 (75% Leon at 24.5 Brix field test; 25% Mindon at 26 Brix field test) is proceeding exactly according to form. So this might help you expect what you may see:

1. Commingled the fruit and crushed. Added a quart of frozen black currants from our garden (the primary flavor of Cab Sauv). Added pectic enzyme and sulfited for a day. The must showed 24.2 Brix (I was glad it wasn't as high as the field test), and pH = 3.28 (temp-adjusted). These are normal, and that pH is not a concern. It's high enough not to inhibit commercial yeast, and it will rise a lot, as you'll see. I also add a bit of tannin to this variety.

2. I used BDX yeast on this batch (I also often use RC212 as I think you did--I used it on another batch and will blend the finished wine). Punched down twice a day. Three days after pitch, SG = 1030 and pH was 3.65! All that pH rise, from the fermentation. I think some acid precipitates even at room temp, and I think the yeast action uses up other acids. 

3. I pitch MLF before others in this area do, but as I noted y'day, I have my reasons. 

4. After 6 days on skins, I pressed. The skins were looking depleted. I didn't test SG but based on poorly the cap was rising, I bet it was about 1005.

5. The ferm finished in tanks. I started watching for evidence of MLF (rush of tiny bubbles when you suddenly twist the carboy; pH rise).

6. 12 days after harvest, SG is 994, so the wine's totally dry. Temp-adjusted pH is now 3.78. I see tiny bubbles when I twist the carboy. So I know MLF is ongoing. Will watch for it to end, probably in just a few days, as the garage is hanging at about 70F and MLF can finish fast in that temp, if it has good conditions.  In a few days I'll test pH again and once pH rise seems to have stopped, I'll test for ML (I use test strips--a good kit and spendy; Kim uses (I think) chromatography).  I'm guessing the pH might stop at about 3.85.

7. Once that's done, then I'll rack off the lees onto oak, and sulfite, and add tartaric for about pH 3.6, and age through the winter. (Always add tartaric in quarter-doses, as we never know the buffering capacity of a particular wine, and if you over-acidify the wine, then you have to add K-Carb and that requires Cold Stabilization--a PITA, and it's horsing around the wine unnecessarily. I've learned that the hard way. Ditto with K-Carb--always add it in quarter-doses (25% of what the formula says you need).

This red is easy to make (once you understand how to manage its pH), and it takes oak well, and ages well for at least 5 years. In warm years with light crop, you get purple fruits, forest floor, chocolate. In cooler years, or in warmer years with heavy load (as my vines were this year, despite my dropping about 1/3 of the fruit this year) you get more cherry flavors with some purple fruit. That is what I'm tasting now, but it might change with age.

Update on what is looking to be a very great grape harvest

 We had two huge heat events this summer, so our GDDs are pretty high. Spring was a bit early also. Our earlier modern grapes are really proving their worth. Our Blattner Labelle is fully ripe (24 Brix; great flavors) and it is such an early grape that the birds are still eating our wild blackberries, so we didn't have to net and we're at only about 1% bird loss.  Also ripe are Jupiter (ranging from 21-22) and Monastery Muscat (20-21). Golubok is very close--some clusters (23 Brix) are already picked, but most (20-21 Brix) need another week. Leon Millot, which I used to think of as very early, is also close (ranging from 21-23). This all seems crazy early, but it's great. And the rumors of wine's demise in western WA were premature--we haven't had one whiff of smoke all summer, despite major wildfires all around our S, E, and N--the onshore winds from the Pacific have been consistent, and saved us. However, the later grapes are at risk of both voracious birds and smoke, and everything is affected by our drought--we're seeing some shriveling and had to do some supplemental irrigation during the summer, which is unusual. So we will see. Due to climate change I think, yields are way above average this year. 

Grape Ripening Surprise!

So, I was thinking of Golubok as a very early grape, about like Leon Millot rouge. But, my Blattner Labelle is proving itself even earlier. On August 14, Labelle is about 95% fully colored and already tasting sweet, when Leon is about 75% colored now and G'bok ranges from 5% colored to about 80% colored. 

1. Such earliness for Labelle seems like a quadruple advantage this year: (a) In our severe drought, some grapes are already shriveling, so a very early grape will get off the vine before it suffers as much shriveling, right? (b) This intense heat and drought are causing the wild Himalayan blackberries (our invasive weed but its fruit tastes great) to shrivel early, and the blackberries are the birds' preferred food, so if the blackberries aren't available, that's when the birds turn to the grapes, and the super-early grapes have the advantage there as well, right? (I might be able to take my Labelle in 2 weeks, whereas Pinot Noir is harvested in late Sept or early Oct, so the Pinot could see hugely more bird pressure). (c) Just like last year, the forest fire smoke held off until mid-August, then the onshore ocean winds shifted and we got hammered by heavy smoke. It may be starting up again this year--2 days ago the haze started up here (and I think it's been bad already over the drier/hotter east side of WA). A super-early grape might see fewer smoky days. (d) And finally, Labelle is tenteurier, so even if it does see heavy smoke, we can press the red juice off the skins and make a skinless red wine without smoke taint. For the win!

Another big advantage of Labelle, in a world where climate change is pushing more and more grape flavors towards black fruit flavors (I would put G'bok and Cab and Merlot and Syrah and Tempranillo in that category), is that Labelle has blue and red fruit flavors. It also sets a lot of fruit. FYI -I got my Labelles from Paul in Canada (legal import; lots of paperwork and expense). 

2. I am surprised that G'bok would show such a wide variation in veraison timing. All my vines came from the same vineyard, and are now in the same row, and same size, etc. One vine has only one cluster which looks like a mistake white grape, but a single berry on it is purple. Another vine has a cluster that's 80% dark purple. The other clusters are in between. Maybe it is because it's the vines' 2nd year? In contrast, the Leon and the Labelle are each almost perfectly synchronized--equal % veraison from cluster to cluster on each variety. That, of course, is what we want--all clusters getting ripe at the same time.

Harvest is close for we who grow modern grapes!

Wine Country fires are horrible this year

 This article describes the huge, numerous, and threatening wildfires threatening people and grapes. Deaths are already being reported. Huge areas are under evacuation orders.

Epona Farm is presently 17 miles west of the area under an Evacuation Level 2 Order (meaning, "be ready to go if we issue a Level 3 order"), from a large set of fires burning on the west slope of Mt St Helens. The fires themselves are 25-35 miles away from us. The winds, which have brought us so much smoke for 3 days now and at times completely obscured the sun, are about to shift, and by Saturday we should see clear skies again. At times the smoke has been at the "unhealthy" level.

Smoke taint is caused by smoke phenols (from burning wood) attaching to grape skins and binding to sugars. Because the phenols are bound to sugars, they are not detectable in the grape (unless you run a lab test, but the labs are backlogged for weeks and the grapes are ripe now). But once the wine is made, the alcohol splits off the smoke phenol and it re-appears in the wine. At small levels it can add an interesting and nice complexifying element, but at high levels the wine is ruined, and there is no practicable fix for that fault.

Dick Erath, one of Oregon's wine pioneers, just advised me that the Willamette Valley saw more smoke than this, for more days, in a past year, and yet there was no smoke taint in their wines that year. We're in the middle of grape and apple harvest, and we'll find out once the wines are made, whether they have smoke taint. At this moment, I feel fairly confident they will not.

The Willamette Valley (and Napa and Sonoma) are under even denser smoke, so that is a threat to many many high-value commercial wines. The first photo is from Oregon (from the article I've linked here), and the second photo is from our farm (near Woodland WA) yesterday.

2019 Grape Harvest Report, SW Washington

Harvest 2019: The Good, The Ugly

1. The Ugly: 

a. Bud break was two weeks late here on the Wet Side (of the Cascades), and summer was cooler, so we didn't make up the late start. Then, we had rains come three weeks early and they were record heavy rains (at our farm, we saw 6.8" rain between Sept 7 and Sept 22, when normally lighter rains wouldn't start until after Sept 22). We all saw record bird damage, as the birds were starving due to the early rains' rotting the wild blackberries. Other area growers have told me that even with nets, they lost over half their crop, as birds found ways in but couldn't get out, so they just hung out inside the nets and ate more and more. Wasp damage was also very high, and some clusters saw some rot--wasp and rot berries had to be hand-removed from each cluster, greatly slowing harvest speed.

b. I've learned which modern grapes can hang through rain, and even resist some bird damage, and which cannot. But every grape saw its Brix fall (a very bad thing here) when the rains came.

c. Many growers on the Wet Side abandoned their grapes this year, or harvested only about 25% of normal yields with far-reduced ripeness. Higher-elevation vineyards fared the worst of course.

d. On the warm side (east of the Cascades--as in Walla Walla, Yakima, TriCities, and Red Mountain), it was a nice-but-cool summer. They had more rain than usual (Yakima saw 1.5" in a day, in early September, when they get only about 8" in an entire year! But their worst issue has been early frost: 24F tonight in Yakima and Tri Cities (Walla Walla is being spared that).  Grapes can withstand some freezing, as sugar-water freezes at a lower point than just water, though any heavy frost will kill the leaves, ending any further ripening. Growers there couldn't harvest early because it was a cool summer, and are scrambling to get their grapes in before the berries freeze and burst. 

e. This is a year when you will need to be a very careful consumer. Look for wineries/sellers who are frank about their wines--try to look past the marketing BS. I pledge to you that I will be as honest as I possibly can, to tell you what my wines taste like. I am pretty optimistic about this year's wines, given the horiffic circumstances of their birth. Perhaps grapes are more adaptable to wine than I knew.

2. The Good: 

a. At our Epona Vineyard, I picked my Leon Millot and Labelle at pretty good chemistry, the day before the heavy rains hit; they hit 22 Brix and had great flavors, and will make good wine. The advantages of my steep-south-slope vineyard, coupled with my choice of early-ripening grapes, made a huge difference in this cooler, shorter year. My Cayuga hung through the heavy rains and avoided most of the bird and wasp damage, and while its sugars were less than normal, it has a wide range of good flavor profiles, depending on the weather. This year, it's showing grapefruit and good nuance and zing. 

b. All of us winemakers on the Wet Side are honing our rose-making skills. I picked many red grapes at about 16-18 Brix (when you want 21-24), and so far it appears they will make a nice, big, darker rose wine. 

​c. Some growers on the Wet Side saw their varieties hang well through rains; these included Marechal Foch and Cayuga. The ability to hang through heavy rain is a prize attribute in a year like this.

d. The Cab Franc I just got in Yakima (Noel Vineyard) is great. 25 Brix and magnificent flavors--as in 2017, I was "last one out" of the vineyard, and all that ​hang time let the fruit shed its green bell pepper notes (pyrazines) and attain fantastic fruit flavors.

e. I also bought Cab Sauv from that vineyard. Was a bit skeptical because the great Cab Sauv usually comes from further east, in W.Walla or Red Mountain. But I read there have been many great Cab Sauvs from the Yakima area. The Cab Sauv I just bought is known for its rosy/floral notes and softness--still fruit-forward and fairly big, but more restrained than a big, powerful Cab. It also hit 25 Brix and had loooonnnnggggg hang time. Can't wait to work with it.

 Kenton

These heavy rains: What's it mean for the 2019 grape harvest?

1. Is this a good or a bad year for grapes, here on the wet (west) side of the Cascade Mountains? That is still hard to say for sure, but there are many large problems facing us grapegrowers now, that we don't see in a year with dry weather all the way to ideal harvest time.

Here are the factors:

a. Weather: If a great year has a long, dry summer, then the weather for grapes is TERRIBLE this year. First, the grapes budded out about two weeks later this year than last, due to a late, cool Spring. (And, even last year, another cool year, the grapes budded out later than normal.) Second, we didn't have enough heat in this short summer to let the grapes catch up, so they stayed behind. Third, these heavy rains we're getting yesterday, today, tomorrow and Tuesday are super-early -- about a week earlier than last year (which was also very early) and three weeks earlier than the end-of-Septembe/early-October rain return date that we grapegrowers hope for. Heavy rain prevents further grape ripening and dilutes the grapes' flavors (the water content rises inside the grape). That can throw the desired sugar/acid balance out of whack. And it can even split the grape, which ruins it.

If you like numbers, look at Growing Degree Days (GDDs), which use temperature as a proxy for sunshine: Through today, my vineyard (Woodland, WA) has had 1,940 GDDs year-to-date, whereas in the warm year of 2015, we saw about 2,100 GDDs through this date -- a huge difference.

b. Grapes' defenses against predation: When it is cloudy or rainy, the birds take it as a signal to come in and eat the grapes. I saw that start up big-time a few days ago. It doesn't take many birds to eat out a good-sized vineyard in just a few days. Even nets don't totally protect the fruit. Also, wasps need to eat sugar before the winter, and they love grapes. Wasps have trouble piercing thick-skinned grapes, but thin-skinned grapes are easy prey. A grape like Riesling can hang into November wtih its tough skin, but a grape like Regent is toast after heavy rains and wasps. Pinot Noir is not very tough, either, and neither are some of my modern varieties.

c. Grapes' defenses against disease: I don't have to spray for fungus because my modern grape varieties are resistant, but a susceptible grape can succumb to fungus during a rainy spell when the farmer can't spray. Grape disease pressure rises very high, with high humidity.

d. Vineyard and grape variety factors: In an average summer, if Fall rains come early, I can have most of my grapes already picked and safely in the winery, because my vineyard has steep South-facing slope (which receives more solar radiation then a flat vineyard), and because my varieties ripen very early. But the grapes budded out so late this year and the rains came back super-early, so I was able to pick only two varieties so far, just before this deluge (half my Leon Millot and all my Labelle). I have many very-early varieties, but they are all way behind, so outside they sit, with my fingers crossed. Surely the most-common vinifera varieties (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris) are also way behind, because they ripen long after mine.

All of that sounds pretty bad, for this year.

However, if the grapes survive these rains, it looks like there are still many sunny days probably coming, after next week's two-day return of yet more rains. That is why it's so tough to say, now, whether this is a good or bad grape year here. The big question will be: Does anybody still have healthy grapes, with good flavors, after the rains, birds, wasps, and fungus have all done their worst? I am not very optimistic that most vineyards will do well this year. I know that I will lose a lot of my remaining fruit.

Many grapegrowers put such a heavy spin on late-season rain that they begin to lose credibility. They want you to think it's not so bad, because they have wines to sell. I've heard remarks like, "Oh, we needed some rain, because the grapes were very dry." Maybe, if the vine was so drought-stressed that there was danger the fruit wouldn't ripen. But usually a super-dry summer will result in great fruit, as the plant (pardon my anthropromorphism here) is worried about the drought conditions, and is in fear for its own survival, and tries extra hard to make its grapes the most-delicious-possible so the grape-eating predator will scatter the seeds for the mother plant. Irrigated vineyards might water during the summer, but by about mid-August they shut off the watering, because the fruit is best when it finishes dry. That is the plain truth.

On the hotter, dry side of the Cascades, it is probably still looking good.

This kind of summer makes me very glad that my vineyard is small and I don't need the wines from this year's fruit to be able to pay the bills. And yet, I have to say that the wines I'm already making should turn out good. But overall yield could be quite low this year, and overall quality could also be low, depending on the above factors for each specific location and variety.

(photo credit: Tanzania)

Epona Vineyard harvest report

Cayuga: My next-to-latest grape (Regent being the latest to ripen); a favorite; hanging at 19.0 Brix and 3.12pH. Flavor is apple-moving to citrus now; a string of warm sunny days coming; I could make a good Riesling style wine with it now, if weather was turning bad, but by waiting I'm hoping for citrus-moving to peaches in the final flavor, when it tastes more like a Viognier. This one has EXCELLENT vinifera flavor emulation. No bird damage yet at all (unnetted, but scarecrows).

Leon Millot (pictured) : Picked 14 lbs per vine this week; sample berries were 24 Brix but the must is 21.5. pH is 3.56; that's not so high that I'm worried--I added 11% white grapes to fix color (same as adding Viognier to Syrah for same reason; it works), and let the ferm reach 88F as you taught me George. In my location, I prefer the big red style (actually tastes a lot like a good Pinot here) to Paul's rose style that is so delicious up on Salt Spring Island. I get nice purple fruits with a hint of woodsiness (not herbaceousness) here. 

Delicatessen: Picked at 21 Brix; pretty high for this variety. Nice fruit. Young plants, so low yield.

Jupiter, NY Muscat, Venus, Monastery Muscat: I make a rose from a blend of these. Jupiter had scraggly clusters (rained during bloom) and I got only 4 lbs per vine. Worse, the clusters shattered (right term?) during picking, so about a quarter of the berries fell to the ground. It reached 23 Brix, though. But if you want a good seedless grape here, why not grow Monastery Muscat? 23Brix and many large pretty clusters of large yellow grapes (13 lbs/vine) with superb flavor, compared to Jupiter's "fairly weak" flavor and Venus' "almost not there at all" flavor. NY Muscat (about 21 Brix) has superb flavor but has one seed per berry here. I should ditch the Venus and Jupiter (sorry, Arkansas) and just use NY Muscat and Monastery Muscat.

Mindon- what I call MIN(nesota 1095) x DON(skoi, which I read is probably the grape called Norway Muscat) is a winner here. David Roy Johnson's grape. 20 lbs from one vine, at 24 Brix. Nice flavor. No bird damage. I blended it into my Leon.

Regent- Sure like its fruit, but it's late here and the birds hit it hard. Only 18 Brix now and I have 33% bird loss already. I should really just give up on it. Makes a nice, full-bodied, Syrah-style wine, though.

2014 Grape Update

2014 in the Pac NW is a great year for grapes. Any poor wine from 2014 represents an inept winemaker.Here's my report from my winemaking:

Cayuga: Really good numbers: pH 3.38 and TA 0.68%. A really nicely low TA, due to our hot summer and long ripening period. Fermenting in carboys now; great fruit from Lon's 112 lbs and from our Le Mans vines 28 lbs. Just a great year with large clusters that got ripe with superb flavors. Will be my first dry Cayuga, given that low acid.

My Mixed Red ("Rosso Misto") from our Le Mans vines: 7 lb Cascade, 17 lb Regent; 10 lb Delicatessen. Great fruit; great flavors. I put in some Rayon d'Or (white) for color fixing but with those reds it isn't necessary. just racked onto oak and sulfited tonight. Smells good. Vivid dark rich, glass-staining purple. Drinking decently now; surprising for a raw wine. pH 3.54 and TA 0.77% (it was 1.16%!!! but MLF really took that acid down; I can drop it a further 0.05% with cold stabilization, so I'll end up with 0.72% TA, which is a bit high for a red so I might add the faintest hint of sugar to balance it up and if I do my job well the tasters wouldn't even notice.

Leon: Picked late due to my travel schedule, so the pH was higher than the target of 3.4 or less. But I wanted it to hang in our most excellent summer, to see how the flavors changed. It turned a bit bricky as pH shot up to 4.12 during primary ferm. But that was only for a few days, and I added tartaric acid to drop pH to 3.69, which returned the good purple color. When pH was 4.12, TA was 0.85%--too high--but MLF really did its job: Tonight I racked and oaked, and it tested at pH 3.73 (pretty good; wish it was a smidge lower) and TA 0.58%, which was low enough that I could add the least bit of tartaric, to squeeze down the pH and help keep the wine fresh and more-stable in terms of shelf life; I boosted TA to 0.62% and I can use CS to take it right back to 0.57% (while maintaining the new, lower pH). Color is a fairly deep purple for a Leon; I'm pleased. The wine is disjointed; hasn't come together yet, but has nice fruit. I don't pick up any off flavors that I could attribute to fermenting on the skins, but I will try a batch with limited skin contact (quick skin color transfer) next year, as an experiment, given advice received from other Leon-makers elsewhere in the US. I think adding the white grapes really does help maintain the color (the old Syrah-Viognier trick).

Need to bottle the 2013s soon. Running out of glassware!

Kenton

Record winegrape harvest in Washington for 2013

Can you believe it? One winery (OK, three affiliated ones: Chat. St. Michelle, 14 Hands, and Columbia Crest) produces two thirds of all Washington's grapes, and their harvest was up 10% this year from last year's record harvest.

So 2013 will see another record for grape production in the Evergreen State.

Read the article here.

Note, in the photo from the above article, how mechanical harvesting is used--much more sophisticated (IMO) than the machinery needed to harvest wheat! That vineyard is in the Columbia Valley's Wahluke Slope.

Good Gracious! The rain!

It is rare indeed to see rains this heavy come so early in the Fall. We've had a LOT of rain over several precipitative spells this month, whereas usually September is fully dry for at least the first 2-3 weeks. And the first rains are usually little affairs, whereas today we're facing two or three waves of a dying typhoon.

I think that most of the Pinot Noir is still hanging in the vineyards. It should stop raining by next Thursday or so, and a few days of sun will help, but this is simply too much rain.

Modern varieties, however, ripen earlier and all mine are picked (Cayuga was the last; it came in yesterday, whereas Leon Millot was picked two weeks ago and is already finished not only with primary fermentation but also with MLF!).

Every year is different. Just look at our current radar image:

 

Bugs!

Egads! Just look at the yellow jackets on a cluster of grapes in British Columbia:

I harvested near Aurora last week, and there it was honeybees all over the fruit, extracting the precious high-sugar water.

Growing grapes isn't easy. Here is an article with some of the insect-related reasons why it's difficult.

The 2013 harvest is going well. Many good wines will be made in the PacNW, but yields are down due to rains during bloom, which lowered the number of berries that set. As a grower or winemaker, it's maddening to time your harvest, because we get periods of rain that can bring in disease and birds, and given that rain stalls or even backwardizes the ripening process, it is a tricky process. We're getting 4-5 days of rain starting Friday night, but after that we expect a full week of sunny days.

Many of the earlier-ripening Modern Varieties (hybrids of vinifera and American grapes) have been harvested already; the later-ripening Moderns will likely be taken at the end of next week's sunny period, as will a good bit of the vinifera, I suspect.

Tales of three vintages, no, four

This is taken from a great article by Andy Perdue, in Wine Press NW, about the climate for recent Washington and Oregon vintages. You can read that article here.

Washington State has seen three very challenging years in a row, for the first time since the 1970s. This wouldn't be unusual for the Willamette Valley, but in the desert of WA, the climate is consistently hot and dry for winegrapes, right? Not always.

2009: A great vintage for some WA plots, but an early freeze put an end to additional ripening at many vineyards. In Oregon, a very good year, following the great year of 2008.

2010: Springtime in the Evergreen State was cold, so buds broke late and the grapes stayed behind schedule all summer. Harvest ran late, which brings special issues to manage, but it was a happy ending with a record crop. Or so we thought, until a hard freeze before Thanksgiving decimated many vineyards which hadn't time to harden off for winter. (Let's face it, folks--vinifera vines are wussies compared to native American vines). The famed Horse Heaven Hills got it particularly hard. At Champoux Vineyard--where Quilceda Creek sourced some of its cabs--whole blocks of vines died.

In Oregon, it was a plague of starving birds which hit the vineyards during preharvest in 2010. The cold summer weather prevented the normal development of the quadrillions of blackberry vines upon which the birds had become so dependent. Over 20% of Oregon's grape crop was lost, and in some vineyards it was much, much higher than that.

2011:  This vintage was worse than 2010, with an even colder Spring and later harvest.

(that incredible photo of a staggered boxer is copyrighted by Reuters)

But as we've seen so often in the past decade, WA and OR winemakers are really getting a handle on how to cope with weird weather. Wet years in the Willamette can still produce good Pinots, for example, and Oregon's whites from the cold years of '10 and '11 can be superb (some say the 2010 Pinots are, too). The application of science, in the field and the winery, can undo some of Nature's damage in the field. Washington's wines from those three trying years were still quite good, as evidenced by their professional scores.

So as 2012 approached there was not a little trepidation. And Spring was cool, with budding a bit late. But summer was grand, with heat units off the charts (OK, much higher than average) for the Willamette and a great growing season was had in both states. Record harvests strained all available tankspace. Too early to know for sure, but it appears 2012 will produce many great wines in the Pac NW.

Oregon wine grape harvest 2012

Today's Oregonian has an article (front page of the Business section) about the Oregon Pinot harvest. The photo (of Alloro's Pinot Noir grapes on the vine) looks pretty bad to me--many grapes are shriveled from this near-record-setting drought we've had this year. The loss of water in the grapes drives the sugar level crazy high. The article talks about the risk of excessive sugars and the resulting "hot" (high-alcohol) wines.

So I'm modifying my earlier statement about how this is likely to be a generally great vintage; I now think it might be great for some wines. I think the best wines may come from (a) vineyards that irrigated a bit in the past month, to keep the grapes plump but not so much as to dilute flavors; or (b) older vineyards whose roots have better access to groundwater even in this drought.

High-alcohol Pinot is no fun, and if water is added by the winemaker to reduce the alcohol, that can dilute the flavors.

The Fall rains come tomorrow night and hit in earnest on Saturday or Sunday. Goodbye to one of our longest, deepest summer droughts ever in NW Oregon.

Check out the shriveling/raisining on Alloro's Pinot Noir grapes (photo taken from today's Oregonian article):

Pretty Darn Good Harvest Weather

I have a few "modern varieties" of grapes still hanging, but have harvested seven varieties already (they ripen earlier than vinifera do, as a general rule). But I think most vinifera grapes are still out there on the vines. Their growers are glad to see a later-than-average start to our famous Fall rains.

The 15-day forecast shows 100% chance of of our first heavy rain on Oct 15, so that is a target date for some growers who will want to pick before it hits. But other growers who need a touch more ripening may wait through that cycle (they'll rightly say that their grapes needed a quick freshening from some rain; they may even rightly say that a bit of rain can push more carbohydrates (sugars) into the fruit, which at first seems counterintuitive). Too early to tell, yet, when the next rain will come, after the first wave hits. There is typically a following period of regained nice weather, after the first rain.

But usually the first Fall rains come in late Sept or early Oct.

We've had a very unusual drought this year--only 0.25" of rain in the July 1-Sep 30 quarter! That's the least in EIGHTY YEARS! And we always get rain until July 4-5 or so, so this is quite unusual.

Wed, Oct 3		Sunny. Mild.	68°F	48°F	16 mph / NE	22%	66°F	Low	4%
Thu, Oct 4		Sunny. Mild.	69°F	41°F	11 mph / NE	24%	66°F	Low	5%
Fri, Oct 5		Passing clouds. Mild.	69°F	43°F	11 mph / ENE	22%	67°F	Low	5%
Sat, Oct 6		Passing clouds. Mild.	71°F	39°F	10 mph / NE	23%	67°F	Low	8%
Sun, Oct 7		More sun than clouds. Mild.	74°F	37°F	5 mph / ENE	23%	69°F	Low	13%
Mon, Oct 8		Scattered clouds. Mild.	72°F	39°F	4 mph / W	27%	69°F	Low	19%
Tue, Oct 9		Scattered clouds. Mild.	71°F	39°F	6 mph / NW	33%	68°F	Low	27%
Wed, Oct 10		Sunny. Mild.	69°F	35°F	4 mph / NNE	45%	69°F	Low	0%
Thu, Oct 11		Sprinkles late. Mostly cloudy. Mild.	72°F	35°F	7 mph / SSE	73%	74°F	Minimal	26%	0.08"
Fri, Oct 12		More sun than clouds. Mild.	69°F	35°F	1 mph / NE	69%	69°F	Low	10%
Sat, Oct 13		Mostly sunny. Mild.	70°F	36°F	7 mph / NE	50%	70°F	Low	0%
Sun, Oct 14		Light rain late. Partly sunny. Mild.	72°F	39°F	9 mph / S	70%	74°F	Minimal	37%	0.09"
Mon, Oct 15		Rain late. Mostly cloudy. Mild.	70°F	39°F	14 mph / SW	83%	70°F	Minimal	100%	0.71"
Tue, Oct 16		Scattered showers. Mostly cloudy. Mild.	68°F	36°F	11 mph / SW	76%	68°F	Minimal	63%	0.24"
Wed, Oct 17		Light rain late. More sun than clouds. Mild.	64°F	32°F	6 mph / SSE	79%	64°F	Low	20%	0.11"

(above forecast info is taken from myforecast.com)

Pac NW grape weather update, 9-13-2012

Very good news. A dry and warm summer (warm for this region, which would be a summer cold crisis just about anywhere else). And now, a continuing sunny spell for at least two more weeks. We haven't had more than a tenth of an inch of rain since July 6.

The grapes, all grapes (vinifera and modern varieties), are looking great, though some are already suffering some bird predation.

It would be easy to go ahead and declare a triumphant, wonderful year! but it is prudent to wait and see.

And yet, the harvest is so close now.








(photo credit: alegriphotos.com)