Harvest 2026 Is Underway
Fasten Your Seatbelts
The growing year started early, but we were barely aware -- it involved a few extra daytime degrees through the winter, plus a few extra nighttime ones as well. When spring arrived, the ground wasn't as cold as it usually is, at least in some areas, and the vines got off to an early, but uneven start. Then the dominoes began to fall.
Budbreak started early but took weeks to complete; so did bloom; so did set. This resulted in first crop clusters setting over a period of three weeks or more, which is very unusual. In some blocks, first crop and second crop were developing at the same time. This required much more care in crop "management" than usual -- specifically, figuring out which clusters would be the ones to go through to maturity. Fortunately, grapevines are resilient and, at a very basic level, this entire situation reflects that resiliency -- the vines are figuring out how to successfully set and develop fruit in this peculiar year. It is also fortunate that there's always more variation earlier in the life of the clusters than later -- "catch up" won't bring everything through but it does happen. And, it is also fortunate that we're traditionalists who prefer wines with classic structure, meaning, we like some tannin and other acid structure in our wines -- this year might be above average, giving us both ripe fruit character from the most advanced clusters and more acid structure from the stragglers. Time will tell.