We had a heat spike last week. Monday it was over 90°F, Tuesday it nearly reached 110° and Wednesday it got to almost 105°. We haven’t cracked 80° since then, but the damage was done. I was hanging out with some winegrowing friends on Friday when I got a call from Jean-Marie: he was seeing evidence of some sunburn at our Estate vineyard.
We started to hear from others (and in the media) that the sunburn caused by this hot weather was pretty awful – I’ve heard of at least one Chardonnay vineyard where 100% of the clusters were affected. Yesterday I took a small VIP group for a vineyard tour. It was hard to be upbeat when I sort of just wanted to hang my head and cry.
While we don’t have 100% of clusters damaged by any stretch, it might be as much as 75% in the Counoise and nearly that much in the Grenache and Mourvedre. It is less than 50% in the Syrah and looks like less than 25% in the Pinot. The stuff that was not through veraison was most affected.
Sucks. I’m not going to have the crew do any work until after the damaged fruit has turned to raisins. Then we can pull some of it, and get back to the work of dropping anything that is still green.
From a basic winemaking standpoint, these raisins are not a problem — they tend to stay attached to the rachis when I process them with our gentle old Amos stemmer/crusher. But the presence of raisins will mean I won’t do much whole-cluster stuff this vintage — if any — which will impact the character of the wines we make. The impact won’t be good or bad, but it bugs me that the use of stems has been removed from my tool chest.
There may be more subtle or less predictable effects of this damage. How much were acids affected? Was tannin development arrested or was its trajectory changed? Same question for color. These things and many others are unknown. The weather this vintage is unprecedented, as is the magnitude of the effects of the heat spike.
When I was discussing all this with my winegrowing friends on Friday, someone asked “…wouldn’t it be wild if, after all we’ve been through so far this year, the character of the entire vintage ended up being defined by those three days?” Yes, it would.
Sunburn Disaster
4 Comments
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by Samantha Dugan
30 Aug 2010 at 02:47
Yikes. Sounds like you have some restless nights and plenty of pressure ahead of you kid. Thanks for sharing though, kind of interesting to read what is actually going on rather than some marketing spin. I look forward to reading/hearing more about what this vintage has in store….3 days, simply amazing.
by James
31 Aug 2010 at 11:23
And I had half a bag of Surround (kaolin clay) in the garage, that I did not deploy, because there’s been so little sun as it is… Iwonder if that would have helped at 110 degrees? 75% Zinfandel damage.
by John M. Kelly
01 Sep 2010 at 03:38
James – I have not used Surround, but they have at St. Francis and from what have heard from them it really helps even up ripening in certain blocks/varieties. Whether or not it would have helped prevent sunburn is an open question. My suspicion is that perhaps it might have – to a greater or lesser degree depending on variety, location and cluster exposure.
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by 2010 Harvest: Finally, Pinot « notes from the winemaker
30 Sep 2010 at 17:23
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