Robléon Harvest 2010

You might have noticed that this harvest is late, it's been quite a cool year. 
If you're a Fox News viewer, of course this is clear evidence that global warming in a big fraud.  But what should we make of it?

The short version is that this is going to be a very compressed harvest - we're likely to get 70% of our fruit within a three week period.  I say likely because it all depends on the weather.  We've had a significant warming trend (it's in the 90s in Santa Ynez Valley for the next few days) and this moves things along.  We expect La Encantada Pinot fruit to harvest in a couple of weeks and the late ripeners such as Syrah and Roussanne will be at the very end of October or even early November.

The upside of the cool weather is that we're seeing excellent physiological ripeness at very modest sugar levels.   I know you hear about this every year, but the reality is that sugar levels in California tend to be ahead of flavor development and ripeness of seeds and tannin.  That's why we usually pick fruit at high levels of sugar (26+ brix) that often require amelioration to reduce the final alcohol.  This is a very "European" year for us and we should see far less need to adjust the sugar level of grapes as they come in... and that's a good thing.  But this is farming and we rely on Mother Nature cooperating. 

More soon...

Charles