Sonoma County harvest

There's a long article in today's Press-Democrat about the Sonoma County wine harvest - along with a couple of photos of David Coffaro wnery. The net seems to be that harvest is down an average of 20%-25% this year in Sonoma County. It seems that Lake County and Mendocino County weren't hit at all.
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20 ... winds-down

John

Actually, this bit of the article sounded pretty good:

"Winemakers said that although some of the late-ripening varietals were harvested at lower-than-ideal sugar levels, the grapes developed complex flavors after a long hang on the vine."

I don't know about all of mendiccino but Casey reported on Berserkers that he lost all of the Petit Sirah on Eaglepoint Ranch.

Spotty seems to be the norm. Sunnier vineyards seem to have done better, especially in regions that get less fog. Between cool weather and botrytis, it seems that the (relatively) cool micro-climates suffered quite a lot.
The people I've talked with in person all say that the quality of what they got should be very good. The hard part is "what they got".

John

I went up to Dry Creek Valley yesterday and picked up some wine. They're still pressing at David Coffaro, and with that and the fermenting, it smells great (if you like strong odors). They're saying the harvest will be about what they had last year, except some varieties did better and some worse. David's "hobby" roots still show - he must have 15 or 20 different varieties on his 10 acres!
At Yoakim Bridge, David Cooper was struggling with a stuck fermenter. There were quite a lot of raisins hanging on the old dry-farmed Zin vines. Virginia said they had some mold problems, but the harvest was again about as much as last year. At both places, they're saying the wine ought to be very good, with a lot of structure.

John