We’ll probably be bringing our last grapes of the season in the next few days. It’s been over a month since harvest started, but we still have some fruit on the vines.

There’s one sad story and several happy ones to explain these late bloomers. First, the sad one. I had originally envisioned making a Rhone blend based on Syrah and Mourvedre. The Syrah we planted has been excellent. The Mourvedre, which produces such wonderful, deep, wines in France and Spain, has been a disappointment. We have a little over an acre of it, and this was its last year to show that it could produce quality grapes. The results fell very short of satisfactory. The vines never seemed to fully ripen, which may be in part due to leaf roll virus. Leaf roll is a common vineyard malady which exists in many vineyards that produce outstanding grapes. Our Syrah, which comes from the same vineyard and is also subject to leaf roll doesn’t seem to suffer from it. But in our Mourvedre, I think the combination of the fact hat the grape is a late ripener to begin with, with that ripening slowed down even further by the leaf roll, is too much for the vines to overcome. I don’t know what we’ll do with that part of the vineyard, but the Mourvedre is history.

So much for the sad side of our story. So what else do we still have out there when nearly everything else is in the tanks? Mainly two varieties, Montepulciano and Aglianico. We also have a small trial of Counoise.

What all three of these grapes have in common, obviously, is that they are late ripeners. Being late ripening, they mature under much cooler conditions than the more well-known grapes, which mature often under intense heat. The differences are dramatic.

For example, when we were deciding a month ago whether to bring in a variety, the window for harvesting was a small one. One day they could be underripe, a few days later perfect, and few days after beginning to become shriveled and raisined.

Our late varieties, by contrast, have a long harvest window. In fact, they’ve probably reached a stage where they’ve done all they’re going to do, yet they are maintaining themselves without the evidence of distress that we saw at similar stages a month ago. From a growers’ standpoint, it makes the whole situation a lot more relaxed. The mad rush to bring in a variety in the narrow window when the winery already has more than it can handle is past. These varieties can be brought in when convenient.

Another big contrast: the grapes we brought in a month ago showed Brix levels in the high 20’s (Brix is the percentage of sugar in the grapes). Without corrective action in the winery (which means adding water), the alcohol levels on those wines would be very high. By contrast, the Brix levels on the remaining grapes are all in the 22-25 range, which will make wines with moderate alcohol levels.

I’m going to devote more time in future posts to the subject of why so much of California is planted to grapes that make no sense in our environment. This is particularly so when there are so many varieties out there that are well suited to our more arid regions, but are not planted because the consumer insists instead on Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, vapid though they might be. I don’t know whether this is a chicken and egg problem, with the consumer not trying out new varieties because they aren’t produced by the industry, or the industry not producing them because no one will buy them. At any rate, more on this subject later.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 8:07 am and is filed under Harvest, Viticulture, Winemaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.