Illuminated by a panel of mobile lights, farmworkers with Advanced Viticulture Inc. of Windsor bring in pinot wine grapes at Bricoleur Vineyards in Windsor, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)

Delayed Sonoma County harvest set to play out over next frenzied weeks

PEG MELNIK

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

September 23, 2023

With cool weather and above-average rains this year delaying the grape harvest, winemakers are looking anxiously to October, expecting a frantic sprint to pick before November rains arrive.

“October is going to be insane,” said Justin Seidenfeld of Healdsburg’s Rodney Strong Vineyards. “We’re going to go nuts. Everything is going to be ready to be picked at the same time.”

Winemakers and growers across Sonoma County agreed with the frenzied forecast for October.

“This year, 70% of our fruit will be harvested in October,” said Alec Roser, co-owner of the Windsor-based Advanced Viticulture, a vineyard management company.

Jesse Katz of Healdsburg’s Aperture Cellars said he expected to bring in the same share — 70% of his crop — next month.

And Randy Ullom, wine master of Kendall-Jackson, said in the worst-case scenario, the winery could be bring in 80% of its fruit in 30 days.

“We’ll be full on in October, if not in overdrive. There will be a crunch because we usually have 60 days,” Ullom said with a laugh. “We just have to think positive and stay calm and not become neurotic nuts.”

Abnormal harvest

The slower ripening crop has scrambled harvest schedules for many varietals.

“This year, we’ll be picking pinot noirs and cabernets at the same time,” said Roser of Advanced Viticulture. “Usually, we have 90% of the pinots in by the time we begin with cabernet.”

Roser farms the full geographic reach of Sonoma County, 600 acres ribbed with vines from Annapolis in the remote, mountainous northwest to the Carneros above San Pablo Bay, and from the coastal hills of Bodega to the county line with Napa. Every corner of Sonoma County will be grappling with this abnormal harvest, he said.

Perhaps even more surprising, he added, is that early-season blocks, including pinot noir, could see picking extend to Halloween.

“We’re usually done with picking pinot noir the first week in October, sometimes the second week,” he said.

Some of his company’s coastal pinot noirs haven’t even finished veraison, the French term for the “onset of ripening.” It is when red grapes change from green to purple hues — the very beginning of ripening.

Lagging up to a month behind last year, harvest seems to be at a crawl this autumn. Copious spring rains are the culprit, slowing the onset of bud break. Then cool and moderate temperatures throughout the growing season further delayed harvest, Roser said.

Bricoleur Vineyards, which Roser farms in the Russian River Valley, had its first pick Sept. 20. Last year it was Aug. 23.

Asked about the amount of work ahead in October, he replied, “It’s stressful to even think about right now.”

During the peak of harvest, Roser typically works seven days a week, with four to five hours of intermittent sleep.

Adding to the strain and worry for winemakers and growers, he said, is the threat of botrytis, which mounts the later the harvest goes. The mold infects grapes and can develop with rain, higher humidity and/or foggy, dewy mornings. Harvest blocks with botrytis can be rejected by wineries.

“We’ve always had challenges,” Roser said. “We’ve had heat spikes, wildfires and the drought. So I’m not going to call this year unique. But it is abnormal.”

Farming has always been a roller coaster, he said. He finds composure through the dedicated team behind him.

“My wife might not call me calm,” Roser said, with a laugh, “but I try to hold it together at work.”

Will Mother Nature cooperate?

Even still, this year’s vintage will fare well if Mother Nature behaves, according to winemakers.

“There can be no radical heat spikes upward of 100 degrees, and there can be no radical rains of 2 to 3 inches,” said Kendall-Jackson’s Randy Ullom.

Of course, Ullom is hoping fall wildfires won’t raise havoc with harvest this year, as they have with repeated picking seasons over the past six years.

Ullom oversees roughly 12,000 acres of vineyards from Lake and Mendocino counties to Monterey and Santa Barbara.

“We have weather stations all over, and I’ve become a back-seat weather forecaster thanks to NOAA,” Ullom said, referring to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “I check it once a day, but if we’re in a situation with something developing, I’ll check it three times a day.”

But the balancing act grapegrowers perform at this time of year also has much to do with maturation of grape skins, the accumulation of sugars and the mix of aroma, taste, color and mouthfeel — phenolic ripeness — reaching its prime.

Timing is everything for many winemakers. Seidenfeld of Rodney Strong Vineyards said picking his fruit before the November rains is paramount.

“We have 370 fermentation tanks, so we have the wherewithal,” Seidenfeld said. “It will be a lot of work, but we’ll be able to get it done without compromise.”

Smaller wineries, Seidenfeld said, may have to call in friends to help them move swiftly to pick. Or they may have shorten their fermentation periods or even delay picking.

Undaunted, Bob Cabral of Bob Cabral Wines said he’s not worried about the time frame of this harvest.

Cabral, who’s also the consulting winemaker for Bricoleur Vineyards, said while it sounds counterintuitive, he wants to extend the length of time his grapes have on the vine.

“I want phenolic ripeness to even out within the clusters,” Cabral said. “I can’t live my life or farm with what ifs. I have to farm with what’s going on right now. For the next three to four weeks, there’s no heavy precipitation destined for the West Coast, so let’s ride it out.”

Protecting quality

As they roll with that unpredictability, winemakers are hellbent on protecting quality any way they can. Two strategies include picking at night and relying on an optical sorter, which employs artificial intelligence to tell good grapes from bad.

With cameras linked to a computer, the optical sorter scans harvest grapes and kicks out the ones with defects.

Night picking has become standard practice for the majority of Sonoma and Napa vineyards, according to Tom Pierson, associate winemaker of Windsor’s Bricoleur Vineyards.

“Keeping the grapes cool is beneficial for the winemaking process,” Pierson said. “It protects the grapes from any kind of spoilage.”

The winery had two crews picking grapes from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. on Wednesday, harvesting more than 15 tons of pinot noir grapes. The vineyard crews moved through 5 acres on the estate vineyard, handpicking grapes. Utility vehicles followed behind, rigged with lights to illuminate the work.

“The temperature during the pick was in the 50s,” Pierson said. “There can be a 40-degree difference (from daytime). There’s a big oscillation in the Russian River Valley from the ocean and what the fog pulls in.”

Katz of Aperture Cellars, while bracing himself for the busy days ahead, said it’s not difficult to be upbeat even with the vagaries of harvest when he reminds himself there’s an upside to cooler vintages.

Quality wines can be the upshot of such delayed harvests. The vintages from 2010, 2011 and 2019 are good examples, he said.

“These wines had lower alcohol levels and higher acids and still have a good level of richness of flavors,” Katz said. “As a wine drinker, I really enjoy wines like these.”

As for the wildfire smoke that has drifted into Sonoma County from farther north, Pierson said, it hasn’t affected the quality of the grapes on the vines or the ones that were picked.

“The fires are on the border of California and Oregon and the smoke compounds are not concentrated enough to pose a problem,” he said.

Dodging the destructive elements — fire and rain — and dealing with other challenges, expected and unforeseen, Pierson said, is his goal in the coming weeks.

“It’s going to be a sprint to the finish line, and I’m hoping the weather will cooperate so we wind up with a great vintage.”

You can reach wine writer Peg Melnik at 707-521-5310 or peg.melnik@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pegmelnik.

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