Aaron’s Notes on the 2023 Harvest and Vintage

The growing season in 2023 was marked by a late start as the 2022-2023 winter (and mountain snows) continued through March.  All of the winter snows and rains set up the water table such that we were able to dry farm the entire vineyard.  Bud break, when the vines wake up from their winter slumber, happened in late April, a full 3-4 weeks behind previous years.  Thankfully, the rain and hail stayed away this year during bloom phase allowing the fruit to set beautifully by June.

The weather stayed seasonally cool (although it was plenty warm to get lots of lake and river time in) throughout the summer, allowing for slow and even development of the fruit. After the extreme heat and other external challenges of the past few vintages, to say this weather was welcomed would be an understatement.

As usual, August was the hottest month of the year, but the weather never quite reached the 100-degree mark, which usually has us scrambling around to pull fruit off the vine as quickly as possible.  Rather, this year, we got several evening summer rains, which cooled the weather down significantly and reminded Amy of summers growing up on the east coast.  Thankfully the humidity stayed down enough that rot didn’t set in on the fruit, but it did set the fruit back several days as rains will dilute the sugars/acids in the grapes and require extra time for the clusters to reset.

Finally, on September 11th our Gold Dust Vineyard Primitivo was the first fruit off the vine, followed three days later by our Viognier and Tempranillo.. The Syrah was the last to come off just a week ago (9/20), so all of our estate fruit is off the vine and tastes spectacular as it ferments away in the cellar.  I can now focus on the fermentation management and pressing off the young wine into barrels once fermentation is complete.  We still have the Fair Play Grenache and Zinfandel yet to pick as the vineyard we source these from is about 400’ lower elevation and we are typically waiting 2-3 weeks after pick our vineyard off for this fruit to mature.  All in all, 2023 looks like it’s shaping up to be a very good vintage and I can’t wait to share these wines with you next year!