It must be quite a feeling for our Winemaker, Geoff Gorsuch, when that last grape is crushed. No more worrying about the weather, the sugar, grape maturity. It's all safely "in the barn" as they say,

If you've been checking our Harvest Calendar, then you know that we started our harvest with Sauvignon Blanc on September 12, a little later than normal, and wrapped it up by pressing the last of the estate Cabernet Franc and Petite Verdot October 20. Geoff commented that ".it was a rapid-fire harvest, but quality looks great. It's demanding, but with results like this it's also incredibly rewarding."

Every year has its surprises and this year the Howell Mountain Cabernet amazed us by coming in the first week of crush. We think of Cabernet as a late variety, but those gorgeous, tiny clusters from our hillside vineyard were ready to roll.

We woke up to smoke on September 22. The Yountville fire was ushered in by extremely low humidity and high winds that persisted for several days. Geoff's complaint was that "With conditions like this, all the grapes do is get sweeter. We need them to mature!" He was concerned that dehydration might drive the sugars up without corresponding flavor development. He took a calculated risk and decided to wait and let the weather get back to normal, hoping the grapes would re-hydrate. It paid off! Mild temperatures and our nightly fog returned and we harvested nice, plump Cabernet from our home vineyard here in the Yountville District about a week later.

We saw some light rain the first week of October, followed by reports of crop loss in Chardonnay vineyards all over northern California. High humidity, due to an exceptionally wet winter and spring, can set the spores for mold early in the growing season. When followed by late-season rains, bunch-rot is a real possibility. Chardonnay is a tight-clustered variety and not very rot-resistant. We must have had a guardian angel because our Chardonnay was ready for harvest when the rains hit and we were able to get in good-looking clusters from our Carneros vineyard before they had time to rot. For growers of late-ripening Cabernet, fortunately, it's a tough-skinned variety that forms loose clusters and it can stand up nicely to the small amount of rain we experienced.

Many of our neighbors harvested through the end of the month, mostly Cabernet at that point, and most are reporting being very happy with the small grape size, generally low yields, uniform ripening and overall high quality of this year's harvest. We certainly are.

And this, after a year that presented us with floods, late bud-break, a prolonged heat-wave in July and low humidity and high winds in September that whipped up the Yountville fire. These were significant hiccups, courtesy of Mother Nature, but when you take a step back and look at the season as a whole, we had quite a cool growing season overall, almost no rain, and even ripening.

Geoff summarizes it this way: "Crop yields were way down from last year, the berries were small and loaded with flavor and we've got intense, deep color in the reds. The very mild weather we've had in September and October was great for hang-time and allowed for plenty of flavor development without too much sugar. Overall balance looks terrific. We're thankful to be able to say that it looks like an excellent vintage for us." Click here for the reports from September 1, July 1 or May 1.