By September 2nd harvest is in full swing in Napa Valley, early for the most part but the drought and heat have taken their toll. Yields are down and vineyard managers are picking early before the smoke and wildfires return. Last year we lost our entire crop right around this time amidst 100+ degree temperatures and 12% humidity. Now, this year, we’ve had several weeks of almost moderate weather. A marine layer of moisture is insisting to lay along the edge of California and spawn cool morning fog that is bringing a slight humidity and a mild coolness. Sometimes I think Mother Nature does things on purpose, like send these healing fogs in the middle of drought, meant to soothe the overwhelming dryness of an Earth location needing rain. The mild days are like a balm on burnt skin.
After cool beautiful mornings, the sun kicks in, and there’s a good six hours of high-power energy being beamed in by the sun to each and every plant. Energy the vines use to fill out and mature the grape clusters. This is why canopy management is so important. By thinning the long canes of the vineyard canopy you’re herding all that pre-harvest energy to go to the fruit set, not the vegetation. By this time of year the plants are handsomely mature. They are big, physical green things, with heavy purple man jewelry.
The Caldor Fire and the Dixie Fire and the Monument Fire burn around Napa’s periphery but the wind is taking the smoke to the East and what soot exists stays at a high-altitude. The battle this year is not with wildfire nor smoke nor heat plumes but with drought. Things are really getting dry. Humidity is low and soil moisture is uncannily absent. Vineyards are dying. Trees are dying. Vineyard wells are going dry. Arid winds and dry nights are stripping the plants of their moisture shriveling the fruit. This year harvest is early because there’s so little water out there, either in the air or the ground.
All of which may not be a bad thing. The drought is yet another stress factor for viticulture and if you’ve read any of this vineyard journal you know that stress is a good thing when it comes to taming the wildness of the vine. Vintners in the local newspapers are claiming 2021 yields are down but the grapes are exceptional, full of flavor and intensity thanks in part to the thick skins the plants adapted early on in the hot spring and summer. The tannins from the skins give wines their incredible flavors, and each vineyard is slightly different, with different soils, sunlight orientation, and canopy management, so the amount of tannin variation could, yes, be extraordinary diverse. So remember that a few years from now that this bad year 2021, after that worse year 2020, could be a great year for wine. It will certainly be a good year for wine that ferments with its skins. The tannins should be well developed. Be sure you sample the California 2021 Rose wines next year. They should be lovely and available in April of 2022.
The week after Labor Day (Sept. 6th) turns hot and the vineyards are filled with a frenzy to get the fruit picked and within the safe walls of the winery. The valley becomes extraordinarily busy with trucks and tractors chugging every which way, every variation and model of farming vehicle possible. Picking crews move methodically up and down the vineyard rows. Wineries expand out into their parking lots and are set up and ready for crush. It’s the most people in the vineyards and on the roads all year. St. Helena becomes one chaotic small town.
Many picking crews arrive during the early morning night and pick with the help of large lights mounted to the tractors. From afar the valley floor looks like there’s multiple highschool football games going on, greenish well-lit football fields in the depth of night with lots of activity. The night air is crisp and there’s an autumn scent that sneaks through, how I don’t know because there’s little humidity and moisture to carry scents. We lost our marine layer a few days ago. And then things start to get whacky with the weather. Four days of hot dry weather over 100 degrees and then a night of monsoonal moisture coming up from Mexico. It rained. At 3am in the morning it rained .03 inches! But there’s heat lightening and lightning strikes that come along with the fast moving front. Amazingly there’s no immediate fires although there’s talk about delayed fires that occur within a lightning-struck tree as it burns from the inside out. Evidently the fire can burn for several days undetected before suddenly the tree bursts open and spews a new wildfire from its flaming innards.
The storm woke me up. First it rattled the acorns off of the oak trees above the house and they fell like loud thuds on the wooden deck, louder than you would think, especially bouncing down the wooden steps like men with heavy boots. Then the lightening came. Cloud-to-cloud bursts in the upper sky just like how Thor would do it. Then about five minutes of rain. At one moment the thunder, the gusts of wine, the acorns, and the big drops conspired to get me out of bed and at least look out the window. I did and the whole night a year ago flooded back to me. I laid back down and became lost in thought trying to remember what happened this past year, this lost year between 2020 and 2021, between yearly lightning storms. Who did I meet, where did I go. What happened? And I laid there trying to recall a very dull pandemic year in vineyard solitude, the flashes of light repeating every few minutes, the wind gusting like a bad Hollywood movie.
When the front was over I went outside on the front deck that overlooks a piece of the valley and could see no tale-tell flames. No flashing lights. Could we be so lucky? I waited for the big one and the sound of fire engines on Silverado Trail but it never happened. I stood outside for several minutes, somewhat amazed that there were no fires given the amount of dead brush and dried undergrowth covering all these hills and mountains that surround the valley.
The next day the news said there were a thousand strikes in Northern California. More fires were started to the North and to the East, but not in Napa or Sonoma.
The other odd thing other than we lucked out without burning, was that Gavin Newsom won in the California Governor Recall election. He always had the numbers but I expected bad news of the fiasco because there is so much bad news now in our lives and on the media. At the beginning of the month I expected bad weather, bad news, and more bad politics, but I got nice weather and good, positive election news, with no lightning fires. Thanks Gavin.
And then the election brought in more good weather. Perfect California September days, lots of sun, clear and cold at night, mist and clouds in the morning. I can sense from the picking that it is slowing down - the rush of traffic, the early morning stadium lights in the fields, all of it has somewhat slowed as this perfect weather arrived to further ripen fruit still on the vine. This Mid-Sept is a whole different thing from the rush and haste of early-September.
The picking continues everyday all month long. Vineyard after vineyard succumbs to the workers, the tractors, the dust, and the flat bed trucks. If you stand in line at the grocery carryout there’s a heavy smell of BenGay and perspiration, even through the masks. And when you take your mask off outside to eat the burrito, your face mask is so dusty that your face has a line of dirt right where it meets the bridge of your nose. Take your hat off and the dirty line is again across your forehead. Consider yourself lucky. Its Rutherford dust and comes from some of the most pampered ag land in America.
And so the pickers eventually come around to my little vineyard. It’s at the end of the month. They smell like BenGay and grapemust and have come to pick my little vineyard. It’s a small crew and a single tractor. They’ve been out doing odd jobs and small vineyards and have come with two T-bins instead of the normal four or five bins in better years. We chat, fist-bump, and then they pick and leave.
And now I am depressed. For months, I track and watch and write about this vineyard and how it strives and works to get grapes. How crews of workers come through during the year, how the animals and birds move under the canopies and over the canes. How the heat and drought and elements of nature do battle with the farmer. It is such an effort by the workers, and it’s an effort to keep the whole thing afloat and paid for, to keep a small vineyard in the middle of big-town Napa alive and well. Then, five workers come through and take the grapes and leave in about one hour. That’s it. It’s over. All that work, all these months, all that worry. The vines seem naked and skinny without their clusters of fruit, sad and parched for water.
Harvest in the vineyard is a wonderful time of year until it’s over and everybody leaves for the wineries. The vineyards are left alone and no one comes back.