Grape growers faced a challenging year
SUISUN VALLEY — Grape growers in the region had a tough year with the wild weather, yet Abe Schoener thinks he still got some very good wine out of it.
Not that it wasn’t a challenge. The cool summer meant a late harvest and early rains brought rot to some grapes in both the Suisun and Napa valleys.
“We were just hoping for the best,” said Schoener, whose The Scholium Project works with the Tenbrink vineyards in Suisun Valley and has attracted nationwide attention.
But out of all of the uncertainty came some red wine that Schoener said makes him proud and excited.
“I think the trick was just a certain amount of something between courage and abandon,” Schoener said. “Just go for it.”
This year might be the Year of the Winemaker in Suisun Valley and the region, with the grape crop testing the winemakers’ ingenuity. A crazy weather year is the reason.
Growers faced so many twists – rain in late June, an August where temperatures rarely left the 80s and even dipped to the mid-70s, an unusually strong early October storm – that Solano County Agricultural Commissioner Jim Allan sought federal disaster status. The United States Department of Agriculture granted the request last week, making low-interest loans available.
The official grape yields for the region are not yet known. That will come with the state crush report in February 2012. But the verdict on the past grape-growing year is already in.
“There are some people who had truly brutal experiences,” Schoener said.
Sal Galvan of GV Cellars in Green Valley called this past year the weirdest he’s ever seen for grape growing and he’s been in the business since 1998.
A late-spring hailstorm in particular caused damage, as the hail knocked off the blooms from the vines. The 30-acre vineyard yielded about 42 tons of grapes this year, compared to 100 tons in a good year, Galvan said.
“I’m happy with the Cabernet this year, I just don’t have enough of it,” Galvan said.
He agreed this year poses more challenges for winemakers, with lower sugars in the grapes drastically changing the wine that is emerging. Some winemakers are using new oak barrels to add more flavor. Galvan is taking another approach, since he doesn’t want the new oak to overpower the fruit taste.
“To me, the vineyard needs to speak,” Galvan said, adding that the oak is a compliment to this flavor.
There’s a need this year to scale back and be more delicate with the wines, he said.
“They’re going to be more European-like,” Galvan said. “They will be different from typical wine.”
Roger King of the Suisun Valley Grape Growers Association agreed that 2011 has been a different type of year.
“It was probably the most difficult growing year that’s been experienced in a long, long time,” King said. “It was a really tough year on a lot of different fronts.”
Yet the winemakers must take the unusually small and sometimes damaged grape harvest and make something of it.
“We’ve had a lot of vintages where winemakers could just dial it in, just let it happen,” King said. “This isn’t going to be one of those years.”
Suisun Valley wines usually have higher alcohol with a huge fruit content, King said. This year’s grapes will yield lower alcohol wines with more finesse flavors, he said.
So what the industry sometimes calls “fruit bomb” wines are out. Winemakers will have to take a different approach.
“This is a year that will really challenge wine-making expertise,” King said.
King sees some good coming out of a challenging grape-growing year. He sees a better balance between supply and demand emerging in coming years that will yield higher grape prices. Factors include not only the weather that cut back on supply, but less vineyards in production and the recovering market for wine.
“If you were a grower this year, you got beat up,” King said. “But going forward, the future landscape is way different now. If you made it through this year, you’ve made it.”
Reach Barry Eberling at 427-6929, or beberling@dailyrepublic.net.
Short URL: http://www.dailyrepublic.com/?p=112179
Posted by Barry Eberling
on Dec 3 2011.
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