2023 North Coast wine grape harvest could tip the scales in tonnage and quality

Some North Coast wine grape growers were still trying to find a home for what remained on the vine Thanksgiving week, but most of the region’s fruit had already been picked and crushed by mid-November.

So ends a late, long and relatively cool growing season, resulting in what a number of growers, vintners and brokers are calling a great-quality year. But it wasn’t without some concerns about the growing size of the crop, impact of dampness and when the fruit would be ready to pick as the season stretched into the first fall rains and some near-frosty nights.

“We're certainly glad to be done,” said Bill Pauli, general partner for Ukiah’s Yakayo Wine Co., among the largest North Coast custom processors. Remaining late-ripening zinfandel, merlot and syrah grapes made the quality cut when they arrived, but some lingering cabernet sauvignon grapes from Mendocino and Sonoma counties weren’t achieving the target sugar and acidity levels.

“We saw on ours, and a few other wineries we work with, that the pH was pretty high,” Pauli said.

PH is a measure of relative acidity or alkalinity and noted on a scale from zero to 14, with 7 considered neutral. The target pH for modern wine styles tends to range from 3 to 4 — 3—3.3 sought for white wines and 3.3—3.6 for reds. Pauli said the latest cab grapes coming into his winery were trending over 3.8.

Overall, the red grapes that arrived at the 2.3 million-gallon facility were impressive, Pauli said.

“People who have been around a long time say the quality is good. Our own grapes say quality is good,” he said, noting that the winery also brings in client fruit from Napa County.

Steve Dutton, president of Dutton Ranch in Sonoma County’s Russian River Valley, said during a Sonoma County Winegrowers harvest recap that his crews were picking for the longest he recalled — four months, from Aug. 29 through Nov. 1.

“It was a record harvest for us, picking more tons than we’ve ever picked, which is very fortunate after the last several years we’ve had,” Dutton said.

While the first official tonnage tally for the 2023 harvest won’t be released until early February 2024, reports from around the North Coast suggest the crop could tip the scales, comparing closer to pre-drought vintages. If that proves correct, it may reach the region’s 504,900-ton crush in 2019, doubts remain whether the crop would reach the North Coast record of nearly 589,000 tons in 2018.

Record rain last fall, winter and spring helped North Coast vines bounce back in production, particularly for Russian River Valley chardonnay and pinot noir, according to Christian Klier, regional grape broker for Turrentine Brokerage in Novato. There was concern earlier in the season about the late vine flower bloom and uneven grape development in each cluster — called “shatter” — but the longer season and ample water in the soil by late summer allowed the clusters to develop evenly.

“We saw a big, big increase in tons for chardonnay, which came off a very hyperlight crop the year before, but also pinot noir in cooler regions,” Klier said.

He saw a number of instances of deliveries of Sonoma and Napa county chardonnay and sauvignon blanc grapes above the maximum tonnage in purchase contracts, but wineries mostly were willing to buy the overages.

“But if they weren't if they weren't inclined to take any overage fruit or extra fruit, then we did have plenty of wineries in the background ready to pick up that fruit,” Klier said. “Quite the opposite case when it comes to red blenders and cabernet in the North Coast.”

The market for Napa cab grapes was strong up until November, when the relatively few tons of remaining grapes on the vine weren’t achieving desired sugar levels, measured in degrees brix, Klier said. Some of that fruit was bought by Napa Valley producers on discount because grape concentrate would have to be added to get the crushed fruit up to winemaking standards, and other Napa cab grapes were rejected.

But like with overages of North Coast white grapes, cab producers elsewhere in the region — where cab grape prices last year were one-third the $9,000-a-ton Napa Valley average but double the Central Valley pricing — were waiting to buy the discounted fruit, Klier said.

Rejections of wine grapes this fall were happening elsewhere in California much more often than in the North Coast, mostly for red varieties on older vines that struggled to get the fruit sugar levels, according to Glenn Proctor, partner with grape and bulk-wine brokerage Ciatti Co. in San Rafael.

The crop statewide exceeded multiple tonnage estimates throughout the season. In August, Ciatti forecast that 3.8 million tons of wine grapes would be crushed in California this year, which would have been about 12% heavier than the 2022 crop. But after September rains from the remnants of Tropical Storm Hilary resulted in bigger grape berries, the company now estimates that there were about 4.1 million tons on the vine by the end of October.

Yet because a number of wineries across the state were exercising grape contract clauses on maximums and quality issues like mildew, Ciatti estimates that 500,000-600,000 tons likely were left on the vine this year, resulting in a statewide crush of 3.5 million — 3.6 million tons.

“The crop in ’23 was bigger than we needed,” Proctor said at gathering of more than 200 industry professionals in Napa on Nov. 16.

That’s because the buyer’s market for California wine grapes in recent years as sales of bottle wine slow nationwide is starting to expand. This year, there’s more California cab available for vintners to buy in bulk this year, with a lot selling at lower prices per gallon in the past four months as harvest approached, Proctor said at the 34th Wine Industry Financial Symposium, presented by WineBusiness Events.

“There’s concern with 2023 about what impact a bigger vintage will have,” he said.

Even though Sonoma County’s chardonnay crop appears big this year, more of the county’s 2022 cabernet is coming on the market in bulk, Proctor said. And some Napa Valley producers are putting their bulk 2022 cab back on the market.

What industry watchers will be looking for in demand for fine wine in 2024, to adjust grape purchasing decisions, will be how well bottles of wine sell in the fourth quarter, the top sales period for wine and often referred to by the month-name initials “OND.”

Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.