To Pick or Not to Pick

When do wineries and their winemakers pick grapes? Is it an easy decision? Do they plan, for example, in August to pick their grapes on, say, September 22?

The fact is that this is a critically important decision. Winemakers will know what style of wine they would like to create. Timing is critical and they may not know until nearly the very last minute when they will pick.

Some monitor brix, essentially a measure of the sugar content in a grape that can be measured with a refractometer. Some, as harvest is approaching, may taste grapes daily or more frequently. Almost all watch the weather carefully. They do not want a rain to ruin their grapes and to ruin their harvest. 

Many decide to pick in the overnight or early morning so that the grapes are at their coolest when picked. Others looking for a different style of intensity choose to harvest late in the day.

Picking the correct day or days on which to harvest is going to be one of the most important decision that a winery will make. It could be the difference between a more subdued medium-bodied wine and an overripe, overly full-bodied wine, or somewhere in between. It could be the difference between an extraordinary rating from the critics and a mediocre one or worse.

The 1998 vintage of Napa Cabernet paints an excellent picture of this. The weather was funky and heavy rains were a possibility. Some wineries, to preserve their ability to produce sufficient quantities of wine picked early. Generally speaking, their wines were dull and boring.

Others were patient. They were willing to have smaller vintages and even to declassify (the term for not putting your normal name on the bottles, but instead either bottling under a different name or just selling the juice). Those that were patient were generally rewarded. 

Early on, the critics panned that 1998 vintage. Winemakers had taken extraordinary steps and gamble to produce their wines. The wines started out tight (what we call wines whose flavors are not expressing themselvea, at least not yet). But, they evolved. 

The previous vintage, 1997, had been labeled the vintage of the century. While those wines drank well young, most did not last. But, the horrible 1998 vintage surprised. The horribly tight wines matured. As we sit today, in this morass called 2020, some of those wines are finally coming close to their peaks. They are now the collectibles that many wish they had, but either never purchased or gave up on early and drank them unsatisfied.

Part of my motivation for writing this was the horrible Glass Fire still burning in California Wine Country as I write. Winemakers were at different stages in their harvests. Their decisions, not knowing that the horrible fires were coming, will prove to have been critical. This may be a bad vintage. But, be patient with them. There is only so much a winery can do.