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Weather dealt wild card to grape harvest

By Mike Hodgson/Associate Editor

Any assessment of the winegrape harvest now under way in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties depends on which varietal and which area you’re discussing.

In some cases, it may even depend on which part of the same vineyard you’re referring to, as the Central Coast seems to have experienced a form of ultra-microclimates this year.

“If anything, you’d have to term this year ‘different,’” said Louis Lucas at Lucas & Lewellyn Vineyards in Solvang.

Lino Bozzano, vineyard manager at Laetitia Winery and Vineyards just south of Arroyo Grande, had a sharper definition: “It’s a bipolar vintage.”

In some cases, the production volume is down; in other cases, it’s running about normal or at least more than vineyard managers anticipated because of a frost in April that slowed development and a hot spell around the time the vines flowered.

“It’s looking good for us,” said Terence Livingston, in charge of national sales at Fiddlehead Cellars in Lompoc. “We’ve brought in a full ton from our Fiddlestix vineyard.”

Curt Schalchlin, who gets most of his grapes from the Santa Rita Hills near Lompoc and Westside Paso Robles, said he’s heard some growers are 40 percent short of their estimated yield.

“It probably has a lot to do with the early (spring) frost — the plants kind of had to regroup,” said Schalchlin, who was in the process of making his Sans Liege Rhone varietals Friday at Central Coast Wine Services in Santa Maria.

“But we’re meeting all our contracts, which is great,” he added.

Lucas said the cabernet crop at Lucas & Lewellyn is “on the light side,” but the Bordeaux varietals have a good yield.

“The crop is light — that’s the influence of the spring frost and then the fruit set in some varieties,” he said. “The bunches are thinner, especially the cabernet.”

But Jim Stollberg at Riverbench Vineyard & Winery east of Santa Maria said production is better than expected for the pinot noir and chardonnay varietals grown there.

“Overall, it’s better than we estimated,” Stollberg said. “It will still be on the lighter side. ... We’re getting about 2 1/2 tons per acre, which is really close to our normal average. We had estimated it would be closer to 2 tons.”

Some growers are more than 50 percent into the harvest for some varietals; others say they haven’t even started picking.

Norm Huber at Huber Vineyards in Lompoc said it will be at least a couple of weeks before he begins harvesting his pinot noir, chardonnay and Dornfelder in the Santa Rita Hills.

“It’s still slow,” he said. “We haven’t even taken samples in a couple of weeks. ... The yield is very low because of the frost this year. It’s not going to be a good year for us.”

At Talley Vineyards & Winery east of Arroyo Grande, vineyard manager Kevin Wilkinson said about 60 percent of the pinot noir has been harvested, but the chardonnay harvest has just barely begun.

But generally, vintners are happy with the quality of the grapes that are coming off the vines.

Lucas said the Lucas & Lewellyn crop “quality is excellent.”

“The crop is off 30 to 40 percent, but some of the varieties are quite good,” he said, noting the Malbec and cabernet franc “are almost perfect crops.”

“We’ll be picking quite a bit of chardonnay this coming week,” he said Friday. “It’s testing quite good. What I’ve seen of the grapes at the winery — especially the pinot noir — I’m very pleased.”

Livingston said the Fiddlehead fruit is especially nice.

“We have smaller berries, but they’re juicy and ripe with flavors,” he said.

But he noted that Fiddlehead is harvesting earlier than some of the other vineyards, picking the grapes at a lower sugar content.

James Ontiveros, who grows pinot noir in the Santa Maria Valley for his Native9 wines, said that so far, “the weather is cooperating” with a marine layer in the mornings and temperatures in the low 70s in the afternoons.

“It’s really ideal because you can see the ripeness of the fruit happening slowly,” he explained. “What always scares us is a heat wave, especially when the grapes are so close to ripeness. It will push them beyond where we want to be ... What we don’t want to see right now is rain or a really hot spell.”