Harvest 2012

Our 2012 Harvest season kind of snuck up on us, as we started picking about 3 weeks earlier than normal this year. We actually started bringing grapes in on August 1^st, as our Edelweiss was more than ready. That is the earliest we have ever started picking, and we probably could have started even a few days earlier, which would have been crazy to start in July! The cool thing about Edelweiss is that it has a very fragrant aroma that wafts through the vineyards when it becomes ripe, and it was very evident the days before we picked.

The other unusual thing I noticed, was that most times when we hit the 95+ mark in heat, is that most plants will shut down and not continue do produce. With grapes, we like to see those nice warm days and cool nights in order to bring our sugar content up, but usually the plants won’t move as quick when it gets as hot as it has been. However, the vines seemed to thrive in this hot weather and have reached sugar levels that I haven’t experienced here in Nebraska before. In all the other years we’ve harvested grapes (and this will be our 16^th year of harvest at JAV), we’ve been able to push certain varieties along but they seem to plateau at a certain brix (the sugars in the grape) and we go ahead and pick them as long as the pH and acids all fall in line. This year the sugars just kept climbing. LaCrosse has been a perfect example. In most years, I’m happy when we can hit 17 or 18 brix. This year, we harvested our LaCrosse here at JAV at 23 brix. That’s quite a bit of difference.

What I’m finding is that we have some very sweet and intense flavors to work with this year, because I believe the grapes are feeling some stress from the weather conditions we’ve experienced. However, because of the lack of rain, our yields have been down. The grapes just aren’t as plump as they normally are. Of course, every year is a bit different and time will tell as to how this harvest will shape up, but the signs are encouraging that we should have some very nice wines from the 2012 vintage.

We wrapped most of the harvest up by September 1st…which is usually when we’re just in the full swing of things!  I’ve come to believe that in growing grapes, the abnormal is normal when we start talking about harvest!