This vintage is particularly intriguing to me for several reasons.

1) It is a drought year.

2) It is the warmest vintage in the past 10 years.

3) Flowering was difficult to say the least.

The drought issue is not news to anyone.  It’s been widely publicized.  However, I don’t think many people outside of the industry know how close we all really came to having zero water for this vintage.  All I hear from growers is how the vintage was saved by the significant February rainstorms.  Those two rain events which brought us over 15″ of rain in some areas may possibly be the only way some farmers were able to have a crop this year.  It was serious! It still is serious.  From July of 2013 to the end of May there has been 18″ of rain TOTAL easily making it the driest in the past 10 years.  Short shoots have been less of an issue this year simply because growers were prepared for it.  Last year didn’t look like a drought year but it was since we didn’t get a bit of significant rain from January of 2013 through the growing season.  The only reason it wasn’t classified as an official drought is because we got a season’s worth of rain in November and December of 2012.

Now to the warmth.  I haven’t heard very many people talking about this.  The main focus seems to be on the drought.  Over the past 10 years, 2004 has been the warmest with 1291 growing degree days or GDDs (If you aren’t sure what a Growing Degree Day is click here) as of the end of May.  This year we were at 1365 at the end of May and that wasn’t even including the two scorching days we had this past weekend of 105+ degrees F!  We are once again flirting with an early harvest similar to last year but with a much warmer overall season. We were super fortunate to have had a very mild frost season this year.  Of course, that probably contributed to this warming trend. I hope the rapid season does not translate into high sugars while we wait for phenolic ripeness to set in, but only the rest of the summer will tell.

This brings me to the third issue, Flowering.  The weather for flowering was not great this year.  It was cool, windy, and we had a rain event right in the middle.  It was classic for what you don’t want to have happen during flowering.  Shatter has been a problem, particularly in Merlot but overall the Cabernet looks ok.  My biggest concern is vines with clusters almost two weeks apart in development.  2013 was a vintage of an incredibly even flowering which translated into an even set, verasion, and harvest with everything coming ripe at the same time.  I don’t predict that same issue this year.  The variability between development on clusters on the same vine is pretty drastic.  Check out the picture below!

This picture was taken about 2 weeks ago with one cluster at pea-size and another just finishing flowering! While this is not the end of the world, all the growers will need to be extra careful during verasion this year and pay particular attention to the green drop.  Carefully selecting and dropping the fruit that is behind will help even out the ripening for the remainder of the season.  This season will not be without it’s challenges but it doesn’t look like everything ripening at once, like last year, will be one of them.

That is the view from the vineyard.  On a personal note, I finished my last MW exam last week and am now starting to figure out what life is like post-MW preparation.  I found more free time and a slight reduction in stress although waiting for the results for 3 months definitely has it’s stressful moments.  The good thing is, the next 3 months will fly by because harvest will be here before we know it.

Author’s note: Weather data sited is for the Oakville, CA weather station.