And they're off! 2015's harvest summary
It’s that time of year again, when we can hear the collective exhale of winemakers and grape growers from around the wine regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Harvest is finished. If there are grapes still hanging at this point, they are being held for potential desert wine production or will be dropped to the ground during pruning. For the first time writing this annual column, we also have some fairly good first hand information from Europe on their harvest, which is also complete.
The harvest in the western appellations as well as Europe was early in 2015, as we had discussed at the start of picking. Early start, early finish — with a looming El Nino, that is indeed good news. Just two weeks ago, we were walking some vineyards that still had grapes waiting to be picked with Rich Funk of Saviah Cellars in Walla Walla. We covered vineyards both in Washington and in Oregon that are still in the Walla Walla Valley American Viticultural Area.
Rich’s approach is to taste the grapes, no refractometer is needed when Rich is checking ripeness. He lets his taste buds and palate tell him when things are ready. The vineyards we checked were all due to be picked the following week, so those are now done for the year. Rich encourages you to not only taste the fruit, but to crunch the seeds and the skin to find the tannins and experience the acid in the sides of the mouth. The grapes were so sweet that after each stop, we would wash our hands off with water from a jug to remove the sticky residue.
For the Walla Walla Valley, 2015 shaped up to be a very good year in the vineyards which bodes well for the wines when they are released. There was no smoke damage either, with the lone serious fire in the area burning prior to verasion and having limited contact with vineyards. However, the crop for Walla Walla and much of Idaho will be small, down nearly 25 percent from 2014. The early freeze last November before the vines had “hardened off” and some spotty hail damage dropped yields significantly.
Further to the west in Washington, the quality was consistently good and the crop a bit larger, but smoke damage was more widespread, leaving some of the grapes unusable. For those areas hit by the severe wildfires, little or no wine is likely to hit the market from 2015.
Oregon similarly enjoyed a warm dry summer, resulting in good quality. The crop also is closer to the volume we saw from 2014, as much of the Willamette was far enough south to miss the deep freeze last November that damaged so many vineyards further to the north.
All of California — with the exception of Lake County to the north of Napa and Sonoma — had a very good year. Big crops and high quality resulted from a long warm and dry growing season. Late spring and early summer rains caused little or no damage, and winemakers appear to be very pleased with the results. Lake County is a bit of a different story, as smoke damage is more widespread and clearly damaged some vineyards.
In Europe, the summer growing season was similarly warm, dry, and long. Harvest is complete there, and from all we heard, it should be a good and plentiful year. As can happen on the continent, there were scattered small scale hail storms that caused intermittent grape damage, but nothing like the widespread kind that severely affected grape tonnage in 2012.
Some wine is still in fermenters, but the little that still is will soon be “barreled down” and ageing away as we enter the winter months. Winemakers will be able to enjoy Thanksgiving with their families this year, as all of their intense work is now done. We look forward to tasting the first of the 2015 white and dry rosè wines next spring, and anticipate the first reds in a couple of years. All in all, it looks to be a delicious proposition!
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George Balling is co-owner with his wife Mary Lancaster of the dinner party a wine and table top décor shop in Coeur d’Alene by Costco. George has also worked as a judge in many wine competitions; his articles are published around the country. You can learn more about the dinner party at www.thedinnerpartyshop.com . You can get all of these articles as well as other great wine tips by friending us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/dinnerpartyshop