After a growing season one longtime winemaker termed “weird,” most Santa Barbara County vintners are finishing up in cellars, putting the 2020 vintage to barrel and tank. And they’re giving a collective sigh of relief to have survived a harvest under the coronavirus pandemic’s mask and social distancing restrictions.
Be it spring frosts, summer rains or Labor Day heat, the months stretching from bud break to harvest can vex even seasoned vintners. Santa Barbara County winemakers watched their colleagues across Northern California lose homes, wineries and vineyards to fires and wondered if they were next.
I reached out to three winemakers — all via email — for their perspectives on the record-setting heat and fast pace, the 2020 grape quality and the challenge of physical labor while wearing masks.
“I started in the wine industry as an intern in 2008, and I can honestly say that this year was the toughest of my last 12 years,” said Rachel DeAscentiis, winemaker and owner with her husband, Michael, of Say When Wine (formerly RASI Wines). “This year hit hard — from heat spikes, watching the devastating fires up north (again), and worrying about them ourselves, not to mention the damage that smoke can do to our industry — all on top of a global pandemic.”
James Sparks, winemaker at Liquid Farm Wine and winemaker/owner with his wife, Anna Ferguson-Sparks, of Kings Carey Wines, called 2020 “somewhat challenged, maybe in line with the 2014 harvest. It wasn’t a horrible year — just a little challenging.”
Part of the 2020 challenge was the frenetic pace: If the 2019 harvest lasted about 12 weeks, this year’s was over in less than half that time.
Liquid Farm produces pinot noir and chardonnay from multiple vineyards throughout the county, as well as a mourvèdre rosé from the Happy Canyon AVA. The repeated heat spikes meant “pinot noir came in fast,” Sparks said, “but that’s also one of the reasons why I think it held its acid — (the levels) jumped up, and then calmed down, which allowed it to still have a constant ripening.”
Rachel DeAscentiis, winemaker and owner of Say When Wine, performs a punch down on pinot noir grapes at Loring Wine Co. in Lompoc, where she makes her wine. (Laurie Jervis / Noozhawk photo)
On the other hand, chardonnay’s numbers lagged — and then peaked quickly, Sparks noted.
For his own label, he picked cabernet franc from Clos Mullet Vineyard in Los Alamos, and said those grapes’ acid levels held strong during a long hangtime, which also produced intense flavors.
Kings Carey also produces grenache, a rosé of grenache and semillon, and it's about to release its first syrah, sourced from a vineyard in southern San Luis Obispo County.
DeAscentiis also kicked off her harvest earlier than expected “after parts of the (Santa Ynez) Valley reached up to 118 on Sept. 6,” she said. “The week before, we still had fruit hanging at 17 brix.”
On the flip side, “the heat helped our thicker-skinned varietals reach ripeness — in previous vintages, we hadn’t been able to get grenache blanc riper than 21 to 22 brix. This year, we picked at those levels nearly one month earlier than the past two vintages.”
Karen Steinwachs, a longtime winemaker and general manager at Buttonwood Farm Winery & Vineyard, described the growth season as very cool early on, which led many to anticipate a later-than-usual harvest.
But then — true to 2020 — an anomaly occurred.
“The time span between veraison (when the grapes change color) and phenolic ripening was much shorter than usual,” she said. “A number of my colleagues experienced the same phenomena. It was a bit of a shock — walking through the vineyard shortly after veraison and expecting to only taste acid, but lo and behold — flavor!”
That heightened ripening meant that Steinwachs started harvesting sauvignon blanc in late August; she had all of that varietal picked and in the cellar before the temperature skyrocketed.
“I mean, really? (A high of) 121 in Solvang,” she said, referring to the record-breaking heat spike throughout Central and Southern California on Sept. 6. “Oddly, none of extreme heat affected sugar levels” in the grapes, and despite some challenges, “the new wines and just-about-wines are pretty darn tasty.”
Labor Day weekend in Santa Barbara County frequently packs heat, but the level of torridness required extra caution for grapes still on the vines.
Nate Axline, assistant winemaker at Liquid Farm, shovels chardonnay grapes into the press at the Lompoc winery. (James Sparks photo)
“Just like with people, we kept hydrating the vines,” she said. “We knew it would be too hot for harvesting during the first (spike), so we just kept the water coming block by block in the vineyard.”
Still, the intense heat fried grapevines’ leaves, and some grape clusters turned to raisins and were dropped, she noted. She pushed back harvest pick times to 3 a.m. to keep both grapes and workers cool and safe.
Buttonwood’s total estate haul was 121.55 tons, all harvested between Sept. 25 and Oct. 15.
Steinwachs lamented the toll that COVID-19 took on the “social aspect” of harvest relished by the local wine community, adding, “It was definitely missing … and missed.”
Sparks and DeAscentiis found wearing masks while performing manual labor “challenging” and “less than comfortable,” respectively.
“The stress of worrying about someone getting sick during harvest, when we’re all worn down and already operating with a thin winery crew, added a lot of extra stress,” Sparks said.
DeAscentiis, who resides in Los Angeles, makes her wine at Loring Wine Co., where she worked as an assistant winemaker from 2012 to 2016.
“Before August (harvest), we tried to do as much work from home, and when we did go to the winery, we tried to go when no one else would be there, or we stayed in another area of the winery," DeAscentiis said. "During harvest, the tasks require us to all work together.”
Say When includes chardonnay, grenache blanc, grenache and petite verdot from Paso Robles, and pinot noir, sourced from both the Sta. Rita Hills and Edna Valley. For 2020, she added a rosé of graciano from Ibarra-Young Vineyard, and the mission grape from a vineyard in Lodi. Her current case production is less than 700, but once she gets her own facility, she said she wants to grow the label to 1,000 to 2,000 cases.
— Laurie Jervis tweets at @lauriejervis and can be reached via [email protected]. The opinions expressed are her own.
The Link LonkNovember 03, 2020 at 06:33AM
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Laurie Jervis: Late-Season Extreme Heat Leads to Accelerated Grape Harvest - Noozhawk
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