In wine, its all about the grapes, or more appropriately its all about the weather that will decide a grape harvest. This year’s grape harvest isn’t entirely predictable and isn’t likely to be called the next “2005″ for harvests. But the market for wine seems to growing fast with novel services like discount wine delivery adding to the overall demand so its not likely that much wine will go to waste.
The UK has had a great year, with a warm spring, early summer, and now sunshine into September has created a bumper crop. This season looks to be near perfect and there will be some great wines to come out of the vineyards in Devon.
In the US things were more mixed. Cooler temperatures and wet, heavy fog stalled the harvest in Sonoma into late August with a number of vineyards using selective picking during early August. An “average” harvest would be in early August, so these grapes aren’t quite the quality. Other known vineyard locations in California such as Napa and Paso Robles have also been affected and have experienced the same late harvest.
One bright spot in the US grape harvest is in Texas where weather was near perfect for a wonderful Gewürztraminer vintage. It is being trumped up by the local media as the “Harvest of the Century” which may be an exaggeration but makes it clear the quality and quantity of the crop. I can only hope that a couple of these vintages make their way around as discount wines delivered so that we can all have a taste!
Another top notch harvest was had in New York where a earlier than average harvest was possible due to a hot summer and appropriate rainfall. The growing New York wine culture will be happy with the harvest and subsequent vintage wines that come from this year!
An early frost in Wisconsin has hit the state’s largest vineyard and dropped the harvest about 15% from the year before . A frost before harvest also doesn’t bode well for the quality of the grapes, but most of that drop in quality is in the grapes that are rejected.
All in all the harvest seems mixed across the board, and you’ll have do to a little research on a bottle before you buy it if you want to get the highest quality out of a 2010.
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