North Coast winegrape harvest starts

AMERICAN CANYON - The North Coast grape harvest for 2016 officially kicked off July 28 morning as work crews picked a block of pinot meunier at the Green Island Vineyard at the edge of the Napa River.

The crew of about 30 Latino men started going down vineyard rows around 5:45 a.m. and were due to finish picking an 8-acre block by 11 a.m.

“The grapes are really happy,” said Julie Nord, the vineyard manager overseeing the pick. “They are growing really well because it hasn’t got too hot. The acids are holding nicely. It should be a great quality year.”

Nord added that the temperature has not reached above 93 degrees this summer at the estate.

The fruit was later to be crushed over at Mumm Napa. It will go into sparkling wine for the winery, which sells its bottles at a premium price range from $20 to $75. The sparkling category has been very strong in recent years with impressive growth.

Mumm winemaker Ludovic Dervin noted pinot meunier is not generally well known with wine consumers compared to pinot noir and chardonnay that goes into sparkling wine. It’s a grape that has a later bud break and is less prone to spring frost, but it actually ripens faster than pinot noir.

“It’s actually a natural mutation of pinot noir,” Dervin said. “It’s one of the main grapes used to make Champagne in France. One-third of the vineyards in Champagne are planted to pinot meunier.”

Grapes for sparkling wine are picked first because the sugar in the fruit needs to be lower for the two fermentation processes that make the bubbles.

This year’s first pick comes after a much smaller crop in most of the North Coast in 2015 - 402,489 tons. That had followed three massive crops.

Growers said that this year’s crop yield appears to be closer to the historical average and more than last year’s level.

“So far it looks pretty good out there,” said Karissa Kruse, president of the Sonoma County Winegrowers, a trade group that represents 1,800 growers around the region. Kruse said she has estimated a yield of at least 5 percent more than last year based on discussions with local growers.

The harvest also appears to continue the recent trend of being an earlier than usual. “We still are going to be a week or two earlier than we usually are,” said John Bucher, who has 14 blocks of grapes in his vineyard in the Russian River Valley.

This year’s pick, however, is not earlier than last year. 2015 was the earliest that Mumm started harvest, when it had its first pick on July 22.

Grapes this month along the North Coast have started to turn color and ripen, which is more commonly referred to in the industry by its French term: veraison. Fruit for red wine turns from green to red and purple, while grapes for white wine goes from green to a golden yellow.

Kruse estimated the overall Sonoma County crop is at a little more than 50 percent at veraison. A rule of thumb for winemakers is that grapes are ready to be picked about 30 to 40 days out from 100 percent veraison.

This year’s harvest has so far been notable for two main things, Kruse said, a good rainfall over the winter and spring months that have provided sufficient water for the grapes to mature without much irrigation, and a labor shortage that has had vineyard management companies scrambling to ensure that they can cover all their jobs.

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