ST. HELENA, Ca. — I tend to take harvest reports from California’s numerous and varied wine regions with a grain of salt. So that’s probably about what this is worth, given the vagaries of weather and the human factors that can come into play over the next month or so.
During a visit yesterday with Flora Springs Winemaker Ken Deis, who is overseeing his 29th harvest at the venerable Napa Valley winery, Deis was optimistic about the 2007 vintage.
“We’ve had a moderate growing season through most of the summer,” Deis said. “The heat has only spiked in the past couple of weeks. That’s brought the sugar levels up and we’re now getting those ripe flavors that we want in the reds.”
He also mentioned that this will likely be a modest vintage in terms of crop load, with loose clusters and small berries, the harbinger of concentrated, intensely flavored wines.
Ho hum, you say, so what else is new about harvest in the Napa Valley? Indeed, there is a popular perception that vintages seldom matter throughout California in general and the Napa Valley in particular.
I can honestly say that I’ve only experienced one disastrous vintage in my nearly quarter of a century of closely observing California wine. That was 1989, when three separate storms swept through the North Coast and devastated what was about to be a robust vintage for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
But Cabernet producers who waited out the storms and picked several weeks into what turned out to be a glorious Indian Summer made exceptional wines, and a good bit of the Merlot survived the rains as well.
Yet stormy weather alone is not the only variable between vintages, and any reasonably experienced wine enthusiast can line up four, five or six consecutive vintages of the same wine and over an hour or so of comparative tasting distinguish characteristics that are unique to each vintage.
What those will be for 2007 is anyone’s guess. All we know at this point is that, barring some drastic weather event, the news on the ground in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino is all good!
PHOTOS: Entrance to Flora Springs Winery; grapes being delivered as harvest kicks into high gear.
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