This vintage is different – not weird, just different. The big heat wave in July made a change. A few leaves got cooked, yes, but the heat made all the vines mature in a fairly short time. Before the heat, we thought we were late, but then we caught up and the weather has been ideal.

The flavors are very good. You really notice them. Because the flavors are there while the sugars are lower, the grapes taste acidic, but they will quickly come into balance. The canopies are very healthy and balanced this year.

This was a tricky year because it looked like the cluster count was low so yields would be low. Some growers were tempted to leave doubles for yield rather than thin back to one cluster per shoot. But the berries got big and some vines are overloaded.

Berry size and numbers vary from cluster to cluster, but there may be 30% more berries this year. There’s good fertility, lots of seeds. And the clusters closed very quickly this year. It didn’t take several weeks. The large seeds and large berries quickly sized up.

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