This year's crush....
 

It's been an odd year. While the rest of the country (and much of the Northern hemisphere) has been sweltering this summer, we in the east bay and in wine country have been shivering! It has been one of the coldest summers in decades, and it may just end up being a difficult year for winemaking.
 
If the weather cooperates and gets hot in the next month, and the rains don't come too early, the fruit we (R&B) get should be fine, perhaps not as big a yield as we would like, but we should be harvesting sometime mid October through the beginning of November! Much later than normal!
 
We, however, may be some of the lucky ones, because some growers in the Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino region have completely lost their fruit this year. This is why:
 
The summer's cool temperature has kept the fruit from ripening properly throughout the region. In fact, much of the fruit in Napa and Sonoma is as much as a month behind the normal ripening calendar. So, to help speed the ripening process, many vineyards did some drastic canopy management, cutting away much of the leaves to expose the fruit to the sun. At the end of summer, however, we got a huge heat spike. For almost three days it was in the low 100s, after barely getting above 85 degrees for much of the summer. Pure and simple, the fruit got sunburned.
 
What happens when the fruit gets burned? The little stem (called the"rachis") that attaches the grape to the rest of the plant burns out and dies. When that happens the grapes have no way of getting nutrients from the plant. From that point on, it simply stops maturing . While the fruit may look great, it is a long way from being ripe enough to harvest for winemaking purposes. At least, not wine that you and I would want to drink. Simply put, for those people, the year's harvest is a loss.
 
Luckily, we did not do any drastic pruning. We did, however, drop more fruit than usual in order for the remaining fruit to become more intense and ready for harvest. Obviously it means we will have a smaller yield, but if the wine gods (Dionysus and his pals) are smiling on us, the fruit we do harvest should be good. Cross your fingers, say a prayer, because the jury's out until harvest day!