What a vintage this has been! We finally began to harvest last week. After a rainy spring and one of the longest, coolest growing seasons in recent memory, our thermometers flirted with triple digit numbers for several days during the last week in August. Farther north in Sonoma Valley, temperatures soared as high as 110° F on Tuesday, the 24th.
September brought a return to moderate weather, but some damage had been done. With foggy, damp mornings the norm throughout the summer, growers had opened their leaf canopies to facilitate air flow and sunlight penetration as a hedge against rot and mildew. But protection against one concern left them vulnerable to another. Grapes that had not been acclimated to warm weather were suddenly exposed to intense sun and heat that shocked and sunburned as much as … More…
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