Harvest Report : California 2000

"The 2002 vintage has been unusual and challenging, requiring a lot of creativity from our vineyard and winemaking teams," said Genevieve Janssens, Director of Winemaking.  "Tim Mondavi and I are very impressed with the resulting wines. They are gorgeous.  Rich, highly extracted flavours, ripe tannins, extremely deep color.  However, it was a year that tested everyone's patience."

The harvest has not been an easy one for either viticulturists or winemakers in Napa Valley.  While many of the world's winegrowing regions have been dealing with devastating onslaughts of rain or hail, the Napa Valley has had sunny, dry weather ... but too much of it.

"There will be some great wines in 2002, with incredible concentration.  Our winemakers have stepped up to the plate and done an excellent job.  They've needed nerves of steel to hang in there, waiting for flavour development through relentlessly hot, dry weather," said DeWitt Garlock, Winegrower Technical Manager.

By the end of today, Friday, we will have all the grapes harvested except for several vineyard blocks of Chardonnay in the Carneros region and a small amount of Botrytis-affected Sauvignon Blanc in our Wappo Hill Vineyard. 

"I'm excited about the quality of the wines, but we've also lost a lot of grapes to dehydration," said Daniel Bosch, Vineyard Technical Manager. "Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon were hit the hardest.  We estimate that we have lost about 30% of the Merlot crop and about 25% of the Cabernet Sauvignon crop.  On the positive side, I think the Merlot and Cabernet grapes that survived the weather are going to make great wines." 

"Overall, the vintage has had fairly average temperatures, rainfall and phenological dates (bud break, bloom and veraison) but all the data isn't yet in for September and October," continued Bosch.  "We have had many days with low humidity and no night fog. Anything below 20% humidity is dangerous to the vines and we had 11 days below 20% in the Oakville region and 9 days in the Carneros region.  Many of those days had humidity in the low teens and single-digit numbers.  In contrast, 2000 had only two days below 20%.  We did experience short spells of very low humidity in 1997 and 1999 and both were excellent vintages, so there are pluses and minuses." 

"Some vintages, like 2001, the wines virtually make themselves.  In contrast, this was an improvisational, hands-on vintage that required a lot of hard work," said Richard Sowalsky, Associate Winemaker.  "The conditions of the vintage necessitated meticulous sorting of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the To Kalon Cellar to assure that only the best fruit made it into the fermentation tank.  Unlike most years, the character of the fermenting Cabernet Sauvignon fruit was unpredictable; we tasted and evaluated every lot daily to guide it through fermentation.  We've worked long hours, keeping a laser-focus on each tank.  Our reward is that the Cabernets are turning out nicely.  They are big wines - highly coloured, with muscular tannins and rich chocolaty flavours.  We are making winemaking decisions on a case-by-case basis.  Most of the wines have wonderful firm, ripe tannins, so we are giving them long maceration times to enhance mid-body texture.  Each time we taste the young wines, they are better and better."

"It is also a year that required many hours walking the vineyards and evaluating fruit maturity," added Sowalsky.  "After a cool start to the growing season, September's heat and low humidity caused sugars to go up rapidly yet flavour and tannin maturation lagged behind. When it is hot and dry, the leaves close their stomates to preserve water, which stops fruit maturation.  It was nerve-racking to wait for full flavour maturity, but worth it in the resulting wine quality."

"Although we have had to wait patiently for flavour development in Chardonnay, this variety was influenced less by the dry weather due to the denser vine canopy.  We have seen a little dimpling on the fruit, but not shrivelling. Usually, Cabernet Sauvignon wraps up the harvest, but this year we have some Chardonnay blocks that still need more time to develop flavours," said Steve Leveque, Associate Winemaker.  "There are some very impressive Pinot Noirs.  We have used very long maceration times this year to develop the ripe, high-quality tannins in the Pinot Noir wines.  The Sauvignon Blanc wines are excellent, with vibrant flavours and balance.

"If vines have sunburned or raisined clusters from the unusual weather, we leave them on until about two days before harvesting so they shield the other fruit.  Then, at harvest, we drop the affected clusters and keep the good ones.  We have also been hand-sorting Pinot Noir on tables.  It has definitely been a labour-intense harvest," Leveque explained.

One of our long-time growers, who has provided stellar Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to Robert Mondavi Winery since 1966, summed up the vintage on a philosophical note, "You can't appreciate the easy harvests without having the tough ones."