For the past eight years, I’ve tracked down various winemakers for an annual harvest perspective. Starting in 2012, the first of several warmer and dry seasons, grapes often reached optimal maturity — when brix and acidity are at ideal levels and grapes are ripe to the taste — as early as mid-August.
But not this year. Winemakers with whom I spoke estimated that the current harvest is a week to three weeks later than that of last year.
“This is the first year since 2011 that I have not started harvest in August,” longtime winemaker Rick Longoria said Oct. 10.
The current harvest, he said, is more “historically normal,” one in which the first grapes to ripen are ready in early to mid-September and the last hang on vines until early November.
Temperatures throughout the growing season remained “moderate to moderate to moderate,” he said.
He and others observed slightly lower yields, with numbers for pinot noir, syrah and chardonnay tonnage down from the 2017 harvest.
Over lunch or wine, and via email and over the phone, I interviewed Longoria and six other Santa Barbara County winemakers during October. While Longoria was in a lull on the day we spoke — after his harvest of pinot noir, whites and syrah but before the Bordeaux reds he also utilizes — most were knee deep in picking or processing yet graciously took my calls from their winery or answered questions in an email.
All seven noted that a season of cooler temperatures yielded a harvest that was “historically normal,” timing wise, versus those of five previous years, when midsummer or Labor Day heat spikes drove earlier picks — often as early as mid-August for pinot noir or chardonnay destined for sparkling wines.
My first harvest news came Oct. 4 in an email from Karen Steinwachs, since 2007 the winemaker and general manager at Solvang’s Buttonwood Farm Winery & Vineyard and a harvest arbiter honed from years of experience.
“We’ll have brought in all the sauvignon blanc by tomorrow (Oct. 5), and the grapes (pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot gris) we get from Hibbits Ranch,” she wrote.
The rain that soaked the county Oct. 3 was followed by two days of strong winds and cooler temperatures. The winds help stave off the powdery mildew that can blossom on the heels of wet weather.
Steinwachs was the first winemaker to predict the pace of harvest 2018 — the down time between the first grapes and those that followed.
“I think we’re going to have about a 10-day break before we harvest anything else, which is worrying as the daylight hours get shorter,” she wrote.
But grapes’ quality and quantity were solid, Steinwachs added.
“It’s a bountiful year, but the vines look healthy and happy, and show no signs of yellowing leaves and vines shutting down,” she said — risks that can accompany a later harvest.
On Oct. 4, the day after the rain, I met Matt Brady in Goleta at Samsara Wine’s brand-new facility in the Los Carneros Business Park. Brady had picked his final lot of 2018 pinot noir two days prior in order to beat the rain.
Samsara’s owners, Joan and Dave Szkutak, bought the label from its founders, Mary and Chad Melville, in 2017. Last year’s production took place at C2, the co-op facility north of Los Alamos, and the Szkutaks and Brady relocated to the Goleta space on Sept. 6 — a mere two days before getting their first 2018 fruit, chardonnay grapes from Zotovich Vineyards.
That chardonnay was picked 12 days later than chardonnay from the same vineyard last year, Brady noted.
Samsara’s pinot noir harvested from Rancho La Viña Vineyard, also in the Santa Rita Hills, was picked 15 days later this year than last year.
“That’s a good average number of days for fruit harvested this year versus in 2017,” he said.
Brady estimated that Samsara’s grenache and syrah grapes would ripen “considerably later” this year versus last.
The rain day caused “a slight slowdown” in the pace of harvest, “but the winds picked up, so the rain itself was not catastrophic,” he said.
Brady emphasized that the fruit he has handled thus far “looks exceptional” despite what likely will be “a light year across the board” as far as yield.
After six years of “early” harvests, the current one afforded Longoria “a lighter workload” midway through the process. When we spoke at his Lompoc winery Oct. 10, Longoria described 2018 as “more like those harvests of the 1970s,’80s and most of the ’90s — the ‘historically normal’ years.”
Like those long-ago harvests, this one has come on the heels of mild weather, which means “the grapes can hang on the vine a little longer,” he said.
More hang time means the grapes have a better chance of reaching a balance in acidity and brix by picking time.
“We are assured of flavor and phenolic maturation by the time we harvest,” Longoria said, adding that overall grape quality is “really good, with full flavors and balanced acid.”
On Oct. 9, Longoria had picked syrah grapes from Clover Creek Vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley. Those grapes, he said, displayed only negligible dehydration because the growth season was one of long, slow ripening with cooler nights and fewer of the heat spikes present in prior years.
Back on Sept. 19, I saw Michael Larner, winemaker and owner of Larner Vineyard & Winery, at an industry event. Harvest was still a distant ship on the horizon. Larner estimated that he might pick his first estate fruit on Oct. 10, and we agreed to speak then.
Life intervened, however, and we did not connect until last Tuesday evening.
Larner Vineyard, located in the Ballard Canyon AVA, saw its first grapes harvested on Oct. 1. The fruit was grenache, and it was not for Larner’s own label but for Jaffurs Wine Cellars, a longtime client of Larner Vineyard.
While other producers since have sourced their grapes from his site, Larner had yet to start harvest for his own label: “Basically, all of my estate fruit — malvasia bianca, viognier, syrah, grenache and mourvedre — is still on the vine,” he said last week.
Overall, “as of today, we’re probably only 40 percent done with harvest,” he added.
After the lull in early October, Larner expects the next two weeks to be “crazy ones” and the pace to be “gangbusters.”
He echoed the others regarding the start of harvest 2018: “Compared to 2017, we’re a week and a half behind.” Larner, like Longoria, described 2018 as a more quote unquote normal vintage, one that resembles 2012, temperature wise.
The current year is not the coldest season in recent memory. That honor belongs to 1998, an El Niño year, Larner noted.
“It was cold throughout that entire growing season,” he said. “This year, we did have some (earlier) heat spikes, which makes an ‘overall’ colder year a little less so.”
Here’s the thing about hot days: When the temperature rises above 95 degrees, “the vines shut down, and there’s no photosynthesis,” he said. Therefore, high temperatures can delay grapes’ overall ripening, as “heat doesn’t necessarily push things along.”
The next day, last Wednesday, I spoke on the phone with Aaron Walker, winemaker at Pali Wine Co. and Tower 15, sister labels produced in Lompoc. Like Larner, Walker was slammed — “I’m crushing syrah as we speak,” he said with a laugh.
Harvest this round is “significantly later” than that of last year, he noted.
While Walker handles fruit from the Central Coast, Pali’s consulting winemaker works the grapes that hail from Sonoma County. Together, they make 80 individual harvest picks for the two labels, Walker noted.
Recent warmer days drove Walker to “make a big push to finish in the next two weeks,” he said.
During “the big lull” earlier this month, and in the days before and after the rain, “ripening stopped, and even went backward a little,” thanks to cool days and cool nights. “I’ve been very happy with the weather.”
Walker called yields good, “higher than we expected, or at least normal or slightly above.”
Winemaker Kat Gaffney, now in her second vintage at Spear Wine Co., responded last week to my query via email.
Like Pali’s estate vineyard, also in the Santa Rita Hills, the Spear vineyard, owned by Ofer Shepher, is younger, a fact that affects overall yield.
“Our estate vineyard is now five years old,” Gaffney wrote. “We’re not only seeing vintage variation in the timing of the (ripening) of the fruit; we’re also watching a young vineyard grow up and into itself.
“Our first pick for Spear last year was chardonnay in late August, and this year we brought in our first chardonnay in September.”
Later that Thursday, I wound up my harvest assessment with Gretchen Voelcker at Martian Ranch & Vineyard southeast of Los Alamos. Voelcker, in her first vintage as Martian’s new winegrower, had brought in her final fruit early that morning and was headed into a long weekend with family and friends.
The harvest just past got underway a good three weeks later than those in 2017 and 2016, she said.
Martian Ranch’s 20-acre vineyard was planted 10 years ago and is home to four white and six red grape varietals, among them tempranillo, grenache and viognier, she said.
Yields this year were down slightly, but she said quality “is excellent, with amazing acids.”
— Laurie Jervis blogs about wine at www.centralcoastwinepress.com, tweets at @lauriejervis and can be reached via winecountrywriter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are her own.