2023 Grape Growing Season in Sonoma County

 A Santa Rosa Press Democrat article in the Sunday paper is a wrap-up of the local harvest season. As it seems with most harvests, there is no perfect season. Actually, ask any farmer if they've had a perfect year because it never happens. The paper interviewed a few local winemakers and vineyard managers. 

The article is here. In case of a paywall I will hit the highlights and throw in a few of my own notes below.

Picking Pinot Noir in the wee hours while the grapes are cool
image from thewineindependent.com

This year's harvest anomalies

A cool spring and early summer led to late veraison (when grapes turn color and start to ripen). This led to a late start to harvest, which is usually about a month-and-a-half-ish after veraison. Over the past decade many harvests started in late July with picking for sparkling wines and by mid-August for still wines. These dates were quite a bit earlier than the historical norms and happened largely because of the drought. 

The harvest of '23 didn't get started until September. Kunde Winery in Sonoma Valley picked their last grapes on November 13th, weeks later than the norm. When you are picking late into autumn, you have to worry about rain and mold. Thankfully, that seems to only be a minor issue this year.

Everyone was happy for no fires, no smoke from fires, and no drought. Wildfires tend to happen in the autumn and, of course, causes major disruptions. Wildfire smoke can give a smokey taste to the wine so many grapes don't even get picked. Drought led to many years of small crops because of the lack of water to irrigate when needed.

The good news

The absence of long heat waves helped keep the grapes on a smooth path to optimum ripeness. If the weather is too hot grapes ripen quickly. Sometimes you don't have a chance to get everything picked at the best time; sometimes the grapes may have plenty of sugar, but the rest of the numbers used to judge the perfect time to pick aren't there yet. Long growing seasons like this one generally give you the best fruit.

Wine quality

Of course, this is really what every consumer wants to know, and it's too early to give a good answer. So far everyone's optimistic based on the even ripening from this growing season. What they really love is the larger crop size. For the growers, it's more grapes to sell. For winemakers, it's more fruit to choose from. For the consumer, it foretells a larger availability of wines.

Looking good so far!