What might be the most challenging California wine harvest in history kicked off this week. The weather has been good; growers are generally happy with how the grapes look. Usually that's good enough, but not in 2020.
Mumm Napa and Schramsberg began picking grapes for sparkling wines this week, but grapes for still wines are a few weeks away. That's just as well, because people need to prepare for new potential hazards.
Foley Johnson winery in Rutherford, Napa Valley closed in July because a winery worker tested positive for Covid-19. The winery has not responded to questions about whether or not it has reopened, and could be a cautionary tale as harvest approaches: what if a winery has to close at harvest? How likely is it that this will not happen to any of the state's 4600 wineries?
"In some cases of small wineries, we are training other winemakers on our team so if the estate winemaker will have to leave for 14 days, we will be trained and know how to operate the winery without a problem," said Maayan Koschitzky, director of winemaking for the Atelier Melka consulting company. "You never know, but better safe than sorry."
Infection fears
Also in July, Napa Valley temporarily closed two of the three farmworker housing centers it operates. In early July, 30 farmworkers in the centers tested positive. What if a vineyard has contracted a picking crew, and suddenly that crew is not available?
"Many of our crew live in Paso Robles which is experiencing the most infections in the county," said Bob Tillman, founder of Alta Colina in Paso. "This certainly increases the probability of contracting the virus. The biggest issue is that, should one of our team get sick, we may all be faced with a two-week quarantine. This could be disastrous given that ripe grapes wait for no man. All we can do is stick to safe operating procedures and hope for the best."
Grape pickers are especially susceptible to widespread infections because they tend to live communally, often far from the vineyards they work, and travel together in trucks and buses. In California, Latinos make up the overwhelming majority of farm workers, and Latinos are bearing the brunt of the pandemic. The state is 38.9 percent Latino, but 58.4 percent of all reported Covid-19 cases are from Latinos, according to the California Department of Public Health.
"The biggest change with the labor contractors has been employees getting tested and having to wait on their results before coming back to work," said Pierre LaBarge IV, owner of LaBarge Winery in Santa Barbara County. "Therefore, on any given day there could be only 50 percent of the crew working in the vineyard."
In addition to worrying about the grapes, the weather, wildfires, the economy and the holdup of the Constellation-Gallo deal, now grapegrowers and wineries have to consider the possibility of being shut down by their county health department at a crucial moment.
"We have a small vineyard and winery team and we have been focusing on keeping everyone healthy," said Jill Matthiasson, co-owner of Matthiasson Wines in Napa. "We are getting a self-check app for everyone to complete everyday, and we will be hiring a 'safety technician' to check that all protocols are being followed everyday, hand sanitizer and masks are available to everyone at all times, etc. And yes, we are very nervous. We hear stories everyday about whole winery and vineyard teams having to quarantine after someone has been exposed or tests positive. It will be all hands on deck for this harvest, but we'll get through it, fingers crossed."
Speaking of all hands on deck, this year has a new labor challenge: travel bans have dramatically reduced the number of winery interns, often recent enology school graduates who try to gain experience in other countries.
Worker worries
"In most cases we had to take less experienced people and do more training, which is not easy this year with masks and social distancing," Koschitzky said.
However, there are a lot of inexperienced workers looking for jobs.
"We typically use some international student interns and this year all of those programs have been cancelled," said Anthony Yount, winemaker at Denner Vineyards in Paso Robles. "Fortunately, we have been able to find others from the restaurant and wine sales industries who are out of work and looking to gain experience in wine production."
Jill Matthiasson's husband Steve said his kids have been instrumental in helping prepare for labor shortages.
"We are building a back-up harvest crew of local 'furloughed' college students stuck back home with their families – basically our kids' friends," Steve Matthiasson told Wine-Searcher. Though anxious about labor, Matthiasson is excited about the vintage: "We are looking at an epic wine vintage. The dry winter gave us tiny concentrated berries, and the weather has been perfect, not too hot, lots of morning fog, so the grapes are just packed with flavor."
Alex Holman, winemaker at Notre Vue Winery in Sonoma County, said that since some work crews are unexpectedly halved in size, he hopes family ties can bring them right back up.
"A unique quality of the Mexican crews that work in California is that at harvest, 50 percent of their wives also come up and pick grapes," Holman said. "We have husbands and wives picking side by side."
Normally harvest-kickoff stories are all about the potential vintage quality. In this case, we've saved the best for last. Everyone may be nervous about the pandemic, but for the grapevines, it's so far, so good.
"The 2020 growing season is looking very good so far," Koschitzky told Wine -Searcher. "We started the growing season a little earlier than last year with very dry and warm conditions averaging 50 to 60 percent of the yearly rainfall. Luckily, we got some later rain in March and April, which assisted with canopy development and prevented early stress, so we were able to wait with irrigation in most sites. Since then, May and June have been extremely warm. July was a little cooler but the weather is warming up again and it looks like this is going to be a warmer than average harvest. The clusters are a little smaller and looser than last year and berries seem to be a touch smaller, which can assist with creating very good concentrated wines."
Several growers said they expect the crop to be smaller than last year, and that could be the beginning of a trend, as 2019 was the smallest California wine grape crop in four years. This is not bad for the industry; last year, there was a glut of Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir on the bulk market, depressing prices for growers.
"As far as crop size, it’s looking lighter than the last few vintages, but not particularly small as compared to a longer-view average," said Amy Tesconi, director of marketing & public relations for the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission. "Our growers are referring to it as a 'right-sizing' year. The hot days and cool nights have caused pretty consistent veraison and the growers are very optimistic about quality."
But this is a farming story, and farmers are nothing if not sanguine worriers.
Stu Smith, partner in Smith-Madrone in Napa Valley, reminds everyone: "The most important weather is the weather that's coming up."
"Covid has certainly put a strain on the availability of labor; there's just fewer people who are working right now," said Sherman Thacher, owner/winemaker of Thacher Winery in Paso Robles. "So the concern becomes the weather. If we experience a heat spike for a decent stretch, many winemakers will panic and be scrambling to pick at the same time, but with fewer people. This weather issue is something we face each year, obviously, but with less labor, it could be extremely disastrous if there's a sort of perfect storm of events."
For the moment, though, the weather is nice, the grapes are maturing, and Mitch Hawkins, owner of Hawk & Horse Vineyards in Lake County, says: "The fruit looks superb. And we couldn't be happier with the clean air and no fires this time of year."
August 07, 2020 at 07:02AM
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California Rolls Out its Toughest Vintage - Wine-Searcher
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