The most crucial time of the season is happening now when winegrowers and winemakers are busy all day and all night to culminate a year of attention and hard work.
“This starts all the way back in January when my amazing vineyard staff comes in and we groom the vines, we feed the vines, we nurture them, we take care of them,” Kyle Lerner, owner, grower, and winemaker at Harney Lane Winery posted on social media. “We get them to their optimal performing levels. I’m super excited and I can’t wait to see what this vintage looks like.”
If you drive through Lodi this time of the year, especially in the morning, you might see harvesters, crews picking and loading grapes into bins, and trucks busily hauling gondolas full of winegrapes to wineries, where they will be sorted, crushed, and placed into storage vessels. And if you visit a winery this time of the year, you might catch the enticing, unmistakable aromas of fermentation.
The days start well before dawn and end long after the fall of darkness. Many crucial decisions must be made that will determine what ends up in the bottle: Are the grapes ready? Do they need more hang time? Do I have a crew ready to pick them? Is there capacity in the cellar?
The answers depend on myriad decisions and practices that were made earlier during the growing season. Some decisions hinged on factors in their control, such as when to prune, thin, irrigate (if necessary), etc., etc., etc. However, the biggest factor, Mother Nature, always is completely out of any growers’ control.
Harvest is a big deal in Lodi – the largest winegrape growing appellation in the United States, responsible for some 20 percent of all wine grapes grown in California. Lodi is the engine that drives California’s wine industry. And because some 90 percent of all wine in the U.S. comes from California, Lodi is a big deal in the big picture.
So, how is the 2024 vintage stacking up?
Joan Kautz, Global Sales and Marketing Manager with Kautz Family Vineyards, said the 2024 growing season was different from last year. Last summer was unusually cool, which caused sugar maturation to lag flavor maturation. This summer, a heat wave in July increased the concentration of flavors and sugars. Yields of white grapes were smaller, while yields were about average for red varieties.
“The brix (sugar level) are very high,” she said. “Harvest is early, quality is fantastic.”
Lerner at Harney Lane described harvest as the finish line for the eight different varieties that thrive on his Henry Ranch estate vineyard. Lerner and his sidekick Labrador, Charlie, walk five miles per day on average when they go through the vineyard to sample the fruit to make critical assessments.
“We have over 40,000 vines on the Henry Ranch that need to be taken care of and nurtured to get this fruit to where it needs to be,” Lerner said.
Over at Oak Farm Vineyards, winemaker Marilia Nimis-Schrader said the estate malbec looked amazing when it was harvested.
“Flavor-wise, they are ready,” she said in a social media post. “The brix, which is the sugar content is perfect, too. We got 26 brix, which should result in about 14.5-, 15-percent alcohol, which is exactly what we want with this variety. And the most important thing is the flavor. Tasting it now, all the flavors and aromas are in the berries, and so we pulled the trigger and scheduled the malbec for today to be picked.”
At Fields Family Wines, 21 tons of grapes hit the winery in five days, which is the amount they usually receive over an entire harvest. Getting hit with 21 tons in five days brought challenges, but they managed to get it done.
“The wines are absolutely beautiful,” the winery posted on social media. “I know every winemaker says this. Mark my words here, keep an eye out of the ’24 vintage.”
Indeed.
Bob Highfill has earned the Certified Specialist of Wine certificate from the Society of Wine Educators and the Level 3 certificate from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET), and he will take you on a journey to meet the growers and winemakers who make Lodi such a special place. Please share your article suggestions and your tales from Lodi wine country at info@stocktonia.org.
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