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Snowden Vineyards

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Diana Snowden Seysses
 
October 29, 2024 | Diana Snowden Seysses

2024 Vintage -- First Take

Hello all, Diana here, writing you from Burgundy and reflecting on the 2024 Napa vintage.

This end of the season brings rest, recovery, and reflection. As the sap flows down to the roots of the vine, wine making teams kick their feet up and sift through the impressions of the vintage we just put to bed. While it is a professional pet-peeve to pigeonhole a vintage before it’s even gone through malo, in the balance, it is important to take a pause and name the defining features while they are still vivid. The Napa 2024 vintage is the most beautiful I’ve ever taken part in. Ironically, it unfolded amid the most painful slow-down in global wine sales I have ever lived through. Perhaps there is divine reason that the two should coincide.

2024 is electric. Analytically, 2024 had high malic acids, high titratable acidities, low pHs, coupled with some of the highest sugars for which I have waited.  One of the most primal, and difficult to describe features was the utter transparency and precision of the wines. There was purity that, as we tasted through our tanks, hit the plexus like a cord resonating from a perfectly tuned musical instrument.

What were the crystallization points of the vintage? What made it so special, so spectacularly harmonious? I suspect the defining moment of the vintage was the heatwave at the end of June. The timing of the heatwave, relative to the vegetative cycles, delayed the digestion of acid and the softening of skins and pulp.

Remember, the myriad of ripening indicators unfold simultaneously yet independently. Sugar is generated through photosynthesis in the leaves and shuttled into the clusters until the lignification of the peduncle. Acids are digested in the berries’ cells through respiration and progress from high to low over the season. The rest -- the evolution of tannins, phenols and flavors, berry turgor, skin softening, and seed hardening -- are all much more complicated. These ripening indicators are dictated by a dynamic web of variables including time, temperature, wind, sun light, water availability, crop load, canopy shape and more. All these individual ripening indicators are progressing throughout the growing season, accelerating or slowing at their particular pace determined by a combination of mother nature and our farming choices, up until picking. The grapes are cut from the vine and at that moment the pin-point is forever established. At the intersection you have a sugar concentration, acid concentrations, tannin and flavor evolution, etc., etc., in one, unique combination to forever define that wine.

After the late June heatwave, photosynthesis progressed optimally, and sugar accumulated efficiently. Meanwhile, all the other ripening indicators were slow to resume. The combination is novel and exciting.

I’ve come to consider that my flying away to France, leaving the wines in peace in the barrel, bung in place, was a hidden blessing for both of us.

Now I give them room to become what they will.

I do have a hunch.

Time Posted: Oct 29, 2024 at 9:45 PM Permalink to 2024 Vintage -- First Take Permalink
Randy Snowden
 
October 7, 2024 | Randy Snowden

2024 Harvest -- Done!

The suspense is over -- a short hot spell at the end of June got our attention, but in retrospect, it wasn't an issue -- at our place in the hills, it meant 3 or 4 days in the upper 90Fs, which is well within historically "normal" weather during the growing season.  With that exception, the weather was near-perfect -- moderately warm days and cool nights to bring the sugars along slowly without burning out the acid.

The weather did take a decidedly abnormal turn on September 30, but by then, of our total harvest of 86 tons, we had already picked 84. 

The moderate weather meant Diana was able to make picking decisions on the basis of the gradual ripening process, without being hurried along by heat spikes or smoke from nearby wildfires.  As important, once the decisions were made, we were able to bring in each block right on time -- across the valley, the only way to bring in everyone's grapes is for most of the crews to be moving around among the different producers, so there's no guarantee a crew will be available at the moment you want to pick a particular block. 

The heatwave starting on September 30 brought daily high temperatures in the 100s -- unlike any weather we can remember in our 70 years farming grapes on the ranch, up until 2017, when climate change finally took hold, making the "new normal" frequent drought years, shocking heat waves, and the constant threat of wildfires and smoke.  We are very fortunate to have been given a year like this one. 

The first lots are already through fermentation, out of the press and in the barrel and Diana's initial assessment is that they are very, very good -- plenty of ripeness, and also plenty of gentle tannins and other acids to provide life.

Time Posted: Oct 7, 2024 at 3:35 PM Permalink to 2024 Harvest -- Done! Permalink