Hurried Harvest
Published: Tuesday, September 4, 2007 at 3:43 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, September 3, 2007 at 9:00 p.m.
Sonoma County grape growers and winemakers enjoyed their Labor Day weekend, but not because they got to relax like the rest of us.
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Winemakers Dennis Borell, left, and Tom Mackey watch Saturday as a batch of chardonnay grapes from Hunter Ranch in the Sonoma Valley is unloaded to be crushed at St. Francis Winery and Vineyards in Kenwood.
SCOTT MANCHESTER / The Press DemocratMany labored long hours through the soaring temperatures that are accelerating this year's grape harvest and creating a literal crush at many area wineries.
"We're really having a concentrated harvest at this point. We're going faster than we've ever gone, by far," said Bob Iantosca, winemaker at Gloria Ferrer Champagne Caves.
The winery is already two-thirds through harvest just three weeks after it began. It has crushed more than 2,000 tons of chardonnay and pinot noir grapes from all over Sonoma County for its sparkling and still wines, Iantosca said.
The steady temperatures in the 70s and 80s that have been common all summer broke into the 90s on Aug. 21 and kept building through last week. Key grape-growing areas like Healdsburg, Sonoma and Forestville regularly hovered in the 90s through the weekend.
That gave nearly ripened grapes just the push they needed. Winemakers watched sugar levels rise and flavors mature, and they made that critical call to bring in the crop.
"This is what we wait all year for," said Chris Silva, president and CEO of St. Francis Winery and Vineyards in Kenwood. "This is rock-and-roll time in the winery."
St. Francis began harvesting sauvignon blanc Aug. 21, moved to chardonnay the following week, and began bringing in reds over the weekend. The winery accepted 9 tons of zinfandel Saturday from a small vineyard south of Healdsburg, and then gave crews time to rest on Sunday.
On Monday, the pace picked up. The winery brought in 48 tons of zinfandel from three Dry Creek Valley vineyards, 42 tons of chardonnay from vineyards in the Sonoma and Alexander valleys and some petite sirah grapes from the Dry Creek Valley, said head winemaker Tom Mackey.
"It'll be coming in hot and heavy the next two weeks, maybe three weeks," Mackey said. "We're looking at a simultaneous year, rather than a sequential year. We're seeing cabernet and we're nowhere done with chardonnay."
The clusters that arrived at the crush pad Saturday were loose, evenly ripened and remarkably free of leaves, which pleased Silva because it showed care had been taken in their harvesting, he said.
"Look how clean that fruit is! Wow!" Silva said as he and Mackey used a forklift to unload bins off a flatbed truck while assistant winemaker Katie Madigan raked through the grapes, testing to ensure their quality.
Up in the warm Dry Creek and Alexander valleys, plenty of grape growers are already well into picking their red grapes, particularly the thin-skinned zinfandel.
"We've got about 90 percent of our zin in, and it looks great, and the cab and merlot are right on its heels," said Dave Rafanelli, owner of A. Rafanelli Winery in Dry Creek Valley.
The early bud break, the dry spring and steady summer warmth with no heat spikes and cool nights made for predictions of a slightly early harvest of exceptional quality.
"We thought it (harvest) would be a few days or a week early, but then it warmed up here in the last eight to 10 days and it accelerated things quite a bit," Rafanelli said.
Some Sonoma County growers are reporting lighter crops than last year, perhaps 10 percent below last year's 216,000 tons.
The lighter-than-expected crop is speeding up the harvest, because the vines can ripen the smaller volume of fruit more quickly than a bumper crop, Rafanelli said.
That could lead to the only downside of an otherwise stellar 2007 harvest -- that it might happen so fast that wineries can't keep up.
"The question is going to be, can you get it all processed before the 25th of September," Rafanelli said.
For a harvest that regularly stretches into late October, getting from vine to winery by the end of September would be a big challenge.
Iantosca, whose Sonoma Valley sparkling wine grapes were the first on the North Coast to be picked, said others are about to experience the mad scramble he's been weathering for weeks.
"All the still wine guys are getting the idea right now that they better get on it," he said.
You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com.
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