Santa Cruz mountain winegrowers: Cool weather means fewer grapes, better quality - San Jose Mercury News
SANTA CRUZ -- The fog hugging hilltops near the Burrell School Vineyards and Winery on Friday morning said it all.
With the grape harvest season under way in the Santa Cruz Mountains, winegrowers are looking for sun to ripen their crop after a cooler than normal summer. But after a couple warm days in the early part of the week, Friday dawned gray and chilly. Worse, rain, possibly unseasonably heavy, is predicted for Wednesday.
The result: While growers are pleased with the quality of grapes, quantity is down, possibly as much as 30 percent overall. And rain could push yields lower.
"Lots of people up and down the state are picking like crazy right now," said Anne Moulton, who owns and operates Burrell School with husband Dave.
Rain also was a problem in many vineyards in the spring, when wet blossoms didn't set fruit.
At Burrell, the tangy fragrance of fermenting merlot grapes, picked a week ago from a ridge top vineyard just inside the Santa Cruz County line, rose from wooden vats. Pinot noir grapes, picked three weeks ago, are already in barrels. But the Moultons needed fewer barrels than last year, as the roughly 4-ton yield was 40 percent less than in 2010.
Dave Moulton had 20 pickers harvesting syrah grapes from the winery's Pinchon Estate near Lexington Reservoir on Friday, He expected to get 2 tons per acre compared to the 3 tons he harvested last year. His chardonnay crop is down 20 percent.
But his big
worry was his petit verdot, hanging in deep purple clusters near the old red schoolhouse that gives the winery its name. The crop isn't ripe enough to pick."It will have to go through the rain," Moulton said, adding afterward he'll run fans and have crews shake clusters by hand to remove water in hopes of avoiding mold.
Even one drop, he said, can spoil the fruit.
Farther south in Corralitos, growers also were watching the skies.
Richard Alfaro of Alfaro Family Vineyards on Hames Road said growers can weather a little rain.
"If we get a little nice weather afterward, it won't be a major event, but if it continues wet and cold, a lot of people are not going to get grapes this year," he said. "My chardonnay crop needs two or three more weeks of good weather." Alfaro said he expects his pinot noir crop to be down 30 percent, but he added, the quality is "the best we've ever had. It thrives on cold weather." John Bargetto, whose Corralitos vineyards supply the family's winery in Soquel, plans to start harvesting Monday. He said he's not expecting a drop in yields, but harvesting is a little later than last year thanks to a cool, wet spring that slowed vines down. Then there were the 28 days of fog in August. His dolcetto, the Italian varietal that goes into the winery's award-winning La Vita, looks good. The chardonnay won't be ripe for weeks.
"The challenge of the late harvest this year is it gets risky and dicey," Bargetto said. "The vineyard is full of grapes, and they look great, clean, fuller than last year. All we need is some heat." Winegrowers say despite lower yields, prices for Santa Cruz Mountain grapes will remain stable, in part due to relationships that favor growers some years, wineries others. Alfaro, who grows 99 percent of the grapes that go into his wines, said pinot noir grapes typically go for $2,500 to $3,800 a ton, chardonnay, $1,800-$2,400 a ton - double or more the price of lesser quality grapes grown outside the region.
Nor do wine consumers have to worry about a spike on the retail shelves anytime soon. At Burrell, Moulton said the syrah picked Friday will spend about three weeks in fermenting before going into oak barrels for 18 months. Then the wine will age in bottles for another 18 months. Current economic conditions don't allow for a price increase, he said. Maybe, he said, that will change by 2014, when this year's vintage hits the market.
In 2010, the wine grape crop was valued at $3 million, according to the county crop report. All crops were valued at a record $532 million last year.
The figure for wine grapes doesn't include the value of the finished product sold on the retail market or the dollars spent by tourists attracted to the area by wineries offering tastings.
01 Oct, 2011--
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