A quick pick for growers

“WE’RE scrambling!” Mike Sullivan, the winemaker at Hartford Court, called from his seat on a forklift. He dumped a small bin of freshly picked Green Valley Pinot Noir grapes onto a stainless-steel sorting slide. A crew of cellar workers were stationed along its length, snatching out leaves and less-than-perfect grapes. The purple mass slid into another bin, this one smoking with the vapor of dry ice used to prevent oxidation.

The grapes had a deep, sweet flavor with a tart zing, soft skins and crunchy little seeds. A good beginning for Hartford Court’s Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir 2003, but nobody was taking quality for granted.

This has been one weird growing season, alternately too cold and too hot, with several surprise thunderstorms. Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties had five fierce storms during the summer -- five more than normal. The last one, in early September, delivered more than 1,000 lightning strikes in a three-hour period and doused vineyards with brief but heavy rain, raising the specter of bunch rot.

Fortunately, the grapes dried out during the breezy days that followed. But that hasn’t done much to calm vintners’ jittery nerves -- especially this week, as California’s table wine harvest gets in full swing. Crews are frantically picking grapes that are suddenly ripe thanks to days of blazing heat after weeks of unseasonably cool weather.

“In my 35 years I’ve never seen it come on this fast,” said Ridge Vineyards winemaster Paul Draper late last week, as his team harvested Zin “hand over fist” in the Geyserville district of northern Sonoma County. “This is the most compressed harvest of Zinfandel we’ve ever seen. I feel exhausted from all the decision making.”

The biggest decision a winemaker faces is when to pick the grapes. There’s a window of time, usually just a few days in a given vineyard, in which they’re in a state of balanced maturity. Sugar, acid, color, flavor, tannin, and the many other components of ripe fruit are all in their relative places, poised to make outstanding wine.

Pick too soon and the wine will be light, hard and acidic. Pick too late and it will be heavy and alcoholic. Erratic fruit quality can’t be corrected in the winery, so the wild weather has kept vintners guessing right down to the wire.

Now, all the varieties seem to be ripening at once, with early and late-ripening grapes such as Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, which seldom cross paths at the crush pad, coming in at the same time.

The crop size is generally about 20% below normal this year in the coastal vineyards that produce most of California’s high-end wines (as opposed to the Central Valley). Zinfandel and Merlot seem to have been especially hard hit by the unsettled weather during flowering and fruit-set. Bunch-weight is down, and many growers report that individual berries are smaller. In general, it has been the combination of light crop and sudden heat that seems to have ripened everything at once.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the 2003 harvest is the mysteriously light Merlot crop. According to grower Andy Beckstoffer, who farms 2,700 acres of vines in Napa, Mendocino, and Lake counties, “The Cabernet is coming on early, and everybody’s loving it,” but Merlot quantity is down 50% throughout the North Coast.

“Nobody can figure it out,” Beckstoffer said. “I thought the spring was fabulous. Everything looked great right after bloom and set. Then something happened to Merlot, and it’s an absolute disaster. Every clone on every rootstock in Carneros got hit. The berries were in some vulnerable stage when we got some weather, and they ended up small, with one seed per berry. Nobody’s ever seen it before.”

This strange development may have an impact on 2003 Napa Valley Cabernets, which often include 5% to 15% Merlot. Carneros district Merlot is valued for the bright, juicy fruit and mid-palate sleekness it brings to a blend. Will a shortage of Carneros Merlot result in a generally more stern 2003 vintage? Time will tell. This is the kind of thing that will be discussed at tastings when the wines start entering the market in 2005.

The lighter crop may dismay some grape growers. Not only will they have less tonnage to sell, but some wineries have been renegotiating grape contracts to pay lower prices, effectively holding growers hostage just as the harvest begins.

In the big picture, however, a smaller crop is good news for an industry that’s been wallowing in excess grapes for the last four years as a result of overplanting during the 1990s boom economy. Several large wineries declared bankruptcy in 2003, leaving many growers without contracts for their grapes. The glut has aggravated general economic woes in a recession that has been particularly hard on restaurants, hotels, and airlines -- all big wine buyers -- after Sept. 11. After this harvest, experts say, the only varieties still in oversupply will be Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir.

More good news for consumers: Analysts say the end of the grape glut doesn’t necessarily mean higher prices for California wines in the near future. The moderating effect on prices of cheap brands like Charles Shaw, plus increasing competition from inexpensive French, Chilean and Australian wines will likely favor consumers through 2005.

It’s too soon for predictions about the quality of the wines this year’s grapes will produce. The transformative processes of fermentation and aging lie ahead. But the consensus seems to be that the lighter crop will yield concentrated flavors in red and white varietals, and the high skin-to-juice ratio in red grapes will give deep color and supple tannins.

Draper said that the quick ripeness and intense flavor of his Zinfandel grapes may prompt an unusual move: two bottlings of ’03 Geyserville, the regular one and a smaller release of riper, higher-alcohol “late-picked.” It would be the first time in 30 vintages that Ridge has bottled two different Geyservilles.

“We caught most of the fruit at ideal ripeness, but about a quarter is riper than we’d like to see,” Draper said. “That means we would hold the press wines out, with the potential for two wines. We’ve never had two from Geyserville, but will certainly look at it rather than see the normal Geyserville be riper than our style.”

In Monterey County, where erratic weather has also been a problem, the waiting game continues.

“I’ve been making wine in Monterey County for 25 years, and this is the strangest weather year I’ve ever seen,” Morgan Winery winemaker Dan Lee said late last week, as he prepared to bring in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes from Santa Lucia Highlands and Sauvignon Blanc from Arroyo Seco. “I’m hoping for some cooler weather. We’ve got the sugar now, so we just need a little hang time to develop the flavors.”

Late last week the National Weather Service was predicting a cooling trend throughout the California through the first week of October. That’s good news for the state’s frazzled vintners.

“Up to now it looked like we were in for a perfect harvest, nice and slow,” said winemaker Jim Klein at Navarro Winery in Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley. “Then this heat kicked in. So, like most wineries, we’re playing catch-up now. We’re hoping for a little break in the weather.”