We are just getting started picking Riesling and we are about 3 weeks behind our usual schedule. The delay in ripening is due to a very cool growing season (it could end up being the coolest on record, see this earlier post on this). We are seeing two additional outcomes from the cool season, high acid and large botrytis infections.

We will have to see how high those acids come in, but I have never experienced acids that high, will they drop by the time we pick? can we rebalance with sugar? Will we have to de-acidify? Time will tell.

Botrytis is spreading quickly, especially in the Yakima Valley – big pad in the back for splitting our sourcing between warmer climate Riesling (Wallula Vineyard) and the Yakima Valley; it will really work as a good insurance policy this year. We usually don’t have much botrytis in Washington (at its best, botrytis is also called noble rot) and I look for it as a complexity agent. Well, we are getting it big this year but I that does not make me that happy. Why? -> a lot of botrytis brings a few winemaking issues including very low yields, high oxidation, off aromas and can lead on filtration nightmares. Awesome, no? we will also have to see when we bring the grapes in what we can do at the winery to mitigate those winemaking issues – it will add cost, no doubt.

At this point we have to compromise between the high acids, the botrytis, the low yields etc… I really feel like we have been teleported to Germany for one year.

Quick post to show you the last 41 years of cumulative GDD data (Yakima Valley) that I got today:

 Exciting table, no? The warmest years were 1987, 2003, 1992, 1990 and 1998. The coolest were 1984, 1971, 1975, 1999 and 1980. Right now we are trailing slightly behind 1999 so we could have the coldest year on record. What does that mean for quality? Well, it will really depends of night time temperature I believe. If we can hang our fruit without a night time frost for another 5 to 6 weeks, we will have a great vintage like 1999. If not, we will have a repeat of 1984 which, I have heard, was a disaster.

Finally a good week of sunshine but let’s not get used to that. Temperatures are dropping in the low 70’s again by the week end. So far our growing season looks awfully like 1999 which, I recall, was a fantastic year for Washington wines. Usually cool years (like 2010 or 1999) are very beneficial to high acid and long hang time favoring very flavorful and intense wines. That’s the theory at least. I am still very nervous remembering the hard frost event we had last year in early October (11th or so) which just stopped the growing season (See this link for this bad memory). It was OK last year because we had a warm year and were ahead, but it would be really ugly if this would happen in a cool year such as the one we are witnessing in 2010. Stay tuned. Below is the all powerful and telling GDD chart.