Feature Article
2006 has been a Roller Coast-er of a vintage…
...hold on tight for an exciting finish!
The Roller Coast Ride Continues
The North Coast endured another “heat storm,” unleashing a hot-rod start to veraison.
-
“Veraison was like a rocket taking off, … The grapes turned in a week”
~ John Hawley, vintner - Hawley Wines
by
Thom Elkjer
August 13, 2006
August 11, 2006 – The North Coast. At 9:00 am, the thermometer in the car tickled 80 degrees as I crossed from Alexander Valley to Dry Creek Valley along Dutcher Creek. When I reached my destination – a vertical tasting of Cabernet Sauvignons going back to 1985 – the vintners said the same thing I had been hearing all summer from growers and winemakers in the North Coast: “Well, sure it gets warm here, but only for an hour or two. Then it cools right down."
Really?
That afternoon at 5:00, I left Keller Estate in Sonoma Coast and, while the wind was coursing through the newly fashionable Petaluma Gap, the thermometer had come down only to 90 from triple digits during lunchtime. Temperatures topped 100 across the Santa Rosa Plain through the midday hours, and Anderson Valley didn’t get down into the 80s until after sundown.
It was yet another “heat storm” on the North Coast.
For a region that is supposed to benefit from “cool climate” winegrowing conditions, it has been mighty warm this summer. A two-week heat wave in July broke records, sent the electrical grid toward overdrive, and took the lives of approximately 140 people in California, a state where swimming pools and air conditioners are standard equipment.
That’s after one of the colder, wetter months of March on record. While the first three weeks of March are winter, strictly speaking, North Coast vintners always refer to the month as spring because that’s when the winter rains are balanced by enough warm sun to send buds breaking on grape vines. The equinox on March 21st officially separates winter from spring. This past March, it never stopped raining until well into April (see Winter Without End), delaying bud-break, flowering, and fruit set by up to three or four weeks depending on when a vineyard was pruned in the winter.
The extremes of cold and heat have apparently left the vines in decent shape this summer, though they are putting some growers through the ringer. That’s because both deep cold and high heat shut vines down and slow the maturation of wine grapes. The longer the growing season takes, the closer harvest comes to the threat of early rain or frost – and in this growing season, no one is betting on “normal” weather at the end.
“Veraison was like a rocket taking off,” vintner John Hawley told me. Veraison is the period of August when grapes turn from green toward their final colors: red, purple, blue, black, golden, or yellow. It usually takes most of the month for a slow, gradual turn of color. Not this year. “The grapes turned in a week,” Hawley says. “The vines had so much compressed energy built up after that wet winter and heat spell in July and they’re finally releasing it.”
I went into Hawley’s Cabernet vineyard on the western slopes above Dry Creek Valley, and was startled to see big bunches of dark purple grapes. A month earlier, many vineyards in Dry Creek Valley held small, tight bunches of hard green pebbles – the kind of grapes you’d expect to see in June, not July. Not only that, the heat stress was evident in many older vineyards.
I sampled a few grapes and was surprised again: they not only looked like early August; they almost tasted like it. “Once we started getting a few weeks of steady but manageable heat,” Hawley explained, “the vines started racing to catch up, and they’re still racin’.”
The question is, will they win that race?
“Our vines are still a week or two behind,” winemaker Michael McNeill says of the 86-acre estate vineyard at Keller. “If it stays this warm, we’ll get back closer to the normal schedule, though it’s getting a little late in the year to make up a lot of days.” McNeill is mostly making Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which ripen earlier than Cabernet, so he’s got some wiggle room. But like everyone else I talk to this summer, he would dearly love to see a gentle glide into autumn.
That’s because the harvest as a whole looks like a good one in the making. For one thing, the late bud break in the spring meant many vines set all their fruit in a relatively short period. “The whole vineyard flowered in two weeks,” Hawley says of his estate property. At harvest, this translates into even ripening and fruit of consistent quality: two of the most critical requirements for today’s polished, fruit-forward wines. Vintners typically even out the crop by leaving significant portions of it on the ground. Having nature ripen all the grapes at the same time would be a sweet reward in this tortured vintage.
Some cooler nights would also be welcome, because lower-temperature intervals tend to encourage acid retention relative to sugar formation in wine grapes. That, of course, is the essential key to balance in table wine.
Right now, the forecast for the rest of veraison looks perfect. In Napa, they expect the next ten days to average a high of 80. In Healdsburg (which lies at the meeting of Alexander Valley, Dry Creek Valley, and Russian River Valley), the average high for the next ten days will be in the high 80s – warm but not too hot.
The question is, will those highs arrive in the morning and hang around all day? Or will the weather finally start matching the wishful descriptions of North Coast vintners and get back to “normal”?
Stay tuned.
~ Thom Elkjer, Regional Correspondent - Northern Sonoma
To comment on Thom Elkjer’s writings and thoughts, contact him at t.elkjer@appellationamerica.com
Really?
That afternoon at 5:00, I left Keller Estate in Sonoma Coast and, while the wind was coursing through the newly fashionable Petaluma Gap, the thermometer had come down only to 90 from triple digits during lunchtime. Temperatures topped 100 across the Santa Rosa Plain through the midday hours, and Anderson Valley didn’t get down into the 80s until after sundown.
It was yet another “heat storm” on the North Coast.
For a region that is supposed to benefit from “cool climate” winegrowing conditions, it has been mighty warm this summer. A two-week heat wave in July broke records, sent the electrical grid toward overdrive, and took the lives of approximately 140 people in California, a state where swimming pools and air conditioners are standard equipment.
That’s after one of the colder, wetter months of March on record. While the first three weeks of March are winter, strictly speaking, North Coast vintners always refer to the month as spring because that’s when the winter rains are balanced by enough warm sun to send buds breaking on grape vines. The equinox on March 21st officially separates winter from spring. This past March, it never stopped raining until well into April (see Winter Without End), delaying bud-break, flowering, and fruit set by up to three or four weeks depending on when a vineyard was pruned in the winter.
The extremes of cold and heat have apparently left the vines in decent shape this summer, though they are putting some growers through the ringer. That’s because both deep cold and high heat shut vines down and slow the maturation of wine grapes. The longer the growing season takes, the closer harvest comes to the threat of early rain or frost – and in this growing season, no one is betting on “normal” weather at the end.
“Veraison was like a rocket taking off,” vintner John Hawley told me. Veraison is the period of August when grapes turn from green toward their final colors: red, purple, blue, black, golden, or yellow. It usually takes most of the month for a slow, gradual turn of color. Not this year. “The grapes turned in a week,” Hawley says. “The vines had so much compressed energy built up after that wet winter and heat spell in July and they’re finally releasing it.”
I went into Hawley’s Cabernet vineyard on the western slopes above Dry Creek Valley, and was startled to see big bunches of dark purple grapes. A month earlier, many vineyards in Dry Creek Valley held small, tight bunches of hard green pebbles – the kind of grapes you’d expect to see in June, not July. Not only that, the heat stress was evident in many older vineyards.
I sampled a few grapes and was surprised again: they not only looked like early August; they almost tasted like it. “Once we started getting a few weeks of steady but manageable heat,” Hawley explained, “the vines started racing to catch up, and they’re still racin’.”
The question is, will they win that race?
“Our vines are still a week or two behind,” winemaker Michael McNeill says of the 86-acre estate vineyard at Keller. “If it stays this warm, we’ll get back closer to the normal schedule, though it’s getting a little late in the year to make up a lot of days.” McNeill is mostly making Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which ripen earlier than Cabernet, so he’s got some wiggle room. But like everyone else I talk to this summer, he would dearly love to see a gentle glide into autumn.
That’s because the harvest as a whole looks like a good one in the making. For one thing, the late bud break in the spring meant many vines set all their fruit in a relatively short period. “The whole vineyard flowered in two weeks,” Hawley says of his estate property. At harvest, this translates into even ripening and fruit of consistent quality: two of the most critical requirements for today’s polished, fruit-forward wines. Vintners typically even out the crop by leaving significant portions of it on the ground. Having nature ripen all the grapes at the same time would be a sweet reward in this tortured vintage.
Some cooler nights would also be welcome, because lower-temperature intervals tend to encourage acid retention relative to sugar formation in wine grapes. That, of course, is the essential key to balance in table wine.
Right now, the forecast for the rest of veraison looks perfect. In Napa, they expect the next ten days to average a high of 80. In Healdsburg (which lies at the meeting of Alexander Valley, Dry Creek Valley, and Russian River Valley), the average high for the next ten days will be in the high 80s – warm but not too hot.
The question is, will those highs arrive in the morning and hang around all day? Or will the weather finally start matching the wishful descriptions of North Coast vintners and get back to “normal”?
Stay tuned.
~ Thom Elkjer, Regional Correspondent - Northern Sonoma
To comment on Thom Elkjer’s writings and thoughts, contact him at t.elkjer@appellationamerica.com
