Smith-Madrone Harvest Reports 2008

These reports are also printed weekly in the St. Helena Star.

They are listed with the most recent first.

Oct 14

Beautiful weather is benefiting those wineries still harvesting. Spring Mt. Winery is in a "steady pick" with two weeks to go. Terra Valentine was going strong last week and this week "it's finishing time." York Creek has a week or so to go and while there maybe "other vintages as good as this one, there are none better." Guilliams and Sherwin still have grapes out and Pride continues it's pace to finish in early November.

October 09

An active week has brought an end to harvesting at Cain, Keenan, Paloma, Schweiger and Smith-Madrone. Guilliams, Pride, Sherwin, Spring Mountain, Terra Valentine and York Creek are still harvesting. It appears now that Spring Mt. winery will harvest up the end of the month and Pride, as usual, will finish in early November. The current consensus is that the long and uneven bloom is responsible for the unusually mixed low tonnage. Some wineries are 40 to 50 percent down with cabernet sauvignon and only 20 percent down with merlot, while other wineries are just the opposite. In 20 years, this was one of the earliest finishes for Paloma.

Sept 26

From not much activity the harvest has jumped to a great deal of action. Keenan, Schweiger, Smith-Madrone are coming to the end of their Cabernet harvest, but others such as Pride, Terra Valentine, York Creek, Guilliams and Paloma are either just starting or still waiting. The short Cabernet Sauvignon crop can be generalized as having smaller bunches than usual and much smaller berries with very little juice - but great color and flavors. Both Pride and York Creek Vineyards had blocks that were devastated by this springs frost/freeze resulting in 30% or less of normal production. I am reminded of the old adage "Big crops get bigger and little crops get littler" and this year's crop is getting even smaller on that day of harvest.

Sept 16

Progress of the Spring Mt. harvest is quite varied - as might be expected from a group of strong-minded mountain folk. Some of us have picked most if not all of our Merlot and others will be starting soon. Several of us have picked some blocks of Cabernet Sauvignon and others are still several weeks off. We all agree that the grapes have high acids, low pH's and yet have very good flavors for so early in the season. Whether it is the harvesting of Merlot, Cabernet franc or even Cabernet Sauvignon the cooler weather is allowing all of us to pick the grapes at the peak of maturity - albeit a rather contested definition.

Sept 9

This week began with a lovely cool respite from last week’s oppressive heat With the cool weather harvesting has slowed to a crawl. Many of us have brought in small lots of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon last week and were fearful of a repeat of the 1984 harvest which, because of the heat, was compressed into a few short weeks. These initial forays into reds seem to confirm the expected short crop. Will the cool weather continue like 2007 or will heat return? With such dry soils can the vines continue to mature their fruit or will they just shut down and collapse? Do we gamble on a few more days or even several weeks for more varietal flavor and risk dehydration and over-ripe raisin-like flavors? Aw, the joys of another harvest.

Sept 2

The 2008 harvest on Spring Mt. began in August and most of us anticipate harvest to be finished by the end of September. Another unusual harvest you might think - hardly. 1996, 1997 and 2001 are some recent vintages with similar harvest dates. The whites have good to very good crop levels, yet most of the mountain is expecting only fair crop levels for the reds. Excellent quality is expected by everyone.