Dying on the Vine : May Rains, Lethal Pest Put Squeeze on State’s Wine Harvest for ’96

Given the buoyant demand for California’s premium wines, vintners would love to be hauling in a bumper crop of grapes right now. No such luck.

Based on preliminary readings from seven key grape-growing regions, this year’s harvest promises to be short by 10% to 20%. The primary causes are heavy rains in May that thinned out buds and hampered pollination and a lethal root louse called phylloxera that has forced growers to rip out thousands of vines in the Napa Valley and Sonoma County.

As a result, consumers can soon expect to be paying more for better wines, prices of which have already ratcheted up 5% to 10% in the last couple of years.

“This is the fourth year in a row of relatively short crops,” said George Schofield, whose Grape Intelligence report in St. Helena tracks the annual harvest. “It’s having a cumulative significant effect on wine availability and, therefore, pricing.” Schofield noted that some particularly hard-hit vintners are reporting yields of just 50% of expected tonnage.

The timing of the shortfall, on top of diminished crops in preceding years, is unfortunate for vintners, who could be selling far more cases than they have been able to bottle. Prices for popular grapes have been skyrocketing--an average of 28% for fine-quality Chardonnay grapes, 25% for Cabernet Sauvignon and 20% for Merlot.

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Vintners, in turn, have been obliged to raise prices, just as consumers--tantalized by improved quality and news of the potential health benefits of wine--have been sampling wines for the first time or trading up to higher-priced fare. Without enough juice to bottle, many wineries have run out of their most popular varieties.

“It’s really disappointing given the increasing demand for our wines,” Rick Theis, executive director of the Sonoma County Grape Growers Assn., said of the prospects for a reduced 1996 harvest.

Boosting prices can be a shortsighted strategy if sticker shock prompts consumers to resort to imports or less expensive brands, said Chris Sandin, general manager of Wally’s, a Westwood wine shop. Some in-demand, expensive labels have jumped $10 to $12 a bottle.

“Some people have been able to get away with it,” Sandin said. “For now California wines are growing, but if we see one more dollar [of increase], we may see a shift” to imports.

Throughout Napa County, growers are reporting that grape clusters “are weighing out light,” meaning that more berries than usual are missing, said Don Weaver of Harlan Estate, a boutique winery near Oakville. After several years of disappointing yields, he added, “we’re all trying to figure out what normal is.”

Exhibiting a farmer’s optimism, Weaver noted the upside of the lighter harvest. With fewer grapes in each cluster, those that remain become more concentrated and tasty. “Mother Nature taketh away and giveth back,” he said. Moreover, he said, growers are finding that the young vines planted to replace those killed by phylloxera are beginning to produce grapes in small, flavorful clusters.

Harlan bottles fewer than 1,000 cases and only this year released its first vintages of red wine, from 1990 and ’91 grapes. The winery grows all the grapes for its Cabernet blend, which carries the prestige of being from the Oakville district, or appellation, and retails for a whopping $65 a bottle. If yields are shy on the winery’s tiny 23-acre plot, Weaver said, “the only threat we see is we’ll just make a little bit less wine.”

For some larger wineries, the situation might prove more dire if they cannot get enough juice from their district to qualify for an “appellation” label. With harvests reduced, some vintners in the Napa Valley and Sonoma County could be “in the lurch,” said Gladys Horiuchi, a spokeswoman for the Wine Institute, a trade group in San Francisco.

Bel Arbor Vineyard in Hopland in Mendocino County is one of many producers--including giant Robert Mondavi--responding to the California grape shortage by venturing overseas. The winery, owned by Brown-Forman Beverages and a cousin of Fetzer Vineyards, just released its first Chardonnay made with grapes from Chile’s Valle Central region.

Horiuchi noted that increased plantings in the Lodi-Woodbridge area and the Central Valley are helping to make up for reduced yields elsewhere. Overall, the California Department of Food and Agriculture projects, the greater acreage should bring the state’s wine grape harvest to 2.3 million tons for 1996, up slightly from 2.2 million last year.

Because of blistering heat in July and August, the harvest got off to an early start this year. But the weather has righted itself; fog has returned, moderating temperatures and getting the harvest back on track.

“It’s not a disaster,” said Kate Jones, a spokeswoman for the Napa Valley Vintners Assn. She added that Napa considers itself lucky compared with France, which recently reported that its wine grape harvest, because of hail, will be mediocre to average at best and could be disastrous if the weather turns wet.

California’s lesser-known wine-producing areas could see a boon from the short harvest in Napa and Sonoma.

“There’s always a silver lining,” said Eileen Fredrikson of Gomberg-Fredrikson & Associates, a San Francisco-based research and consulting firm. “This has done wonders for the lesser varietals. Suddenly, people are very willing to try lots of wine from producers they recognize other than Cabernet, Chardonnay and Merlot.”

Barbera, anyone?

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Smaller Harvests

Grape harvests are down 10% per acre in most of California’s wine-growing regions due to heavy rains last spring and an influx of the vine-killing root louse phylloxera. A look at grape production in several regions of the state for the 1996 season:

Region: Lodi?/Woodbridge -- Grape Harvest*: Down 10% to 20%

Region: Mendocino -- Grape Harvest*: Mixed

Region: Monterey -- Grape Harvest*: Down 10% to 15%

Region: Napa -- Grape Harvest*: Down 10% to 20%

Region: Santa Cruz -- Grape Harvest*: Average yield overall; off 20% on Zinfandel

Region: San Joaquin Valley -- Grape Harvest*: Down 10% to 20%

Region: Sonoma -- Grape Harvest*: Down 10% to 20%

* Figures are preliminary and are based on the 5% to 10% of the 1996 harvest that has been brought in so far.

* Source: Wine Institute