4 Lessons From Harvest 2022

The fall rains have started and our grapes are safely in the winery. We saw yields on target and extremely promising quality. While it’s too soon to characterize the vintage, it has already taught us four lessons:

1) As George Michael says, “Gotta have faith.” When frost impacted parts of the Willamette Valley in mid April, there were dire predictions in the media that crop would be reduced by 50%. What we didn’t know was that vines have a maximum potential and are predisposed to get to that potential. In areas where the frost limited the amount of clusters, the remaining clusters grew to some of the largest we have seen in our 20 vintage experience. When discussing yield with a vineyard owner, she said, “This is nothing short of a miracle.” As such, our yield is on target. Maybe grapes are like humans- loss can make that which remains stronger.

2) It’s all about October- just like baseball. MLB fans know that a sudden burst of excellent playing in October can cancel out a lackluster early season. Similarly, our growing season began with the frost event in April and was followed by the wettest and coolest spring on record. However, a warm and dry summer continued into October. This allowed us to let grapes hang to develop sugar, phenolic ripeness (the building block of tannin), and flavors. We were able to make pick decisions when the chemistry and flavors were ready, not when weather turned inclement.

3) We’re connected to the larger supply chain. Like every other industry, we’re not immune to supply limitations and price increases. This harvest, we experienced limited availability and price hikes of dry ice, a material we used to arrest fermentation when we are trying to allow more time for the juice to be in contact with the skins. We also were impacted by limited numbers of trucks and drivers to transport picked grapes to the winery and bins back to the vineyards, putting a bottleneck in a place we don’t often have one.

4) There’s a dynamic tension between exacting detail and flexibility. During harvest, every single decision matters. The exact date and time of day of a pick matters to the outcome of the wine. That said, there are many decisions a winemaker and grower don’t have control of and there’s an inflection point between precision and flexibility that optimizes the decision. Like the rest of life, it’s not easy to know where that point is, but it’s a practice that is honed during harvest.

Each vintage presents lessons, reminding us that wisdom found in the growing season extends beyond the vineyard.