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California’s Goldilocks vintage 1-10-2024
It is a new year and time for some good news.
Recent history has not been kind for wine. Demand, after decades of euphoric gains, has been flat. Mother Nature has not been kind to several regions with drought, hail, spring freezes, fires, bugs. All the usual suspects.
California, however, enjoyed a Goldilocks year in 2023. And we should enjoy the results for years to come. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
California’s 2023 grape harvest abounds in quality and quantity. “One for the ages,” several winemakers ventured. Quality paired with quantity is wonderful news, even if it may not be unequivocally wonderful for winemakers.
California quantity puts downward pressure on grape prices. Joyously, quantity did not happen because more vines were planted. In fact, growers have dialed back in recent years. Quantity happened because this was a year when everything came together. Water early and a long, steady, cool summer meant grape vines produced bunches larger and heavier than expected. Good harvest weather.
With demand relatively flat and quality grape supply up, the juice going into $15-30 wine will be better than ever before. Hallelujah. You will not have to be a trust-fund baby to enjoy this. The west coast joy juxtaposes with a global harvest that is almost 10 percent smaller than 2022, and almost eight percent smaller than the average of the past 10 years.
Wine is an agricultural product. Every farmer knows to savor good years and survive bad years. After years of fires and drought, California in 2023 enjoyed the immense blessings God and his handmaiden Mother Nature can bestow.
Karen MacNeil, author of The Wine Bible noted: “Every century, every place has its legendary vintages. I have no doubt that 2023 will go down as one of the most phenomenal vintages ever in Napa Valley. Every vintner I’ve talk to about 2023 has been nothing short of ecstatic.”
Adjectives about 2023 in Napa and the west coast in general: elegant, lush, generous, consistent, delicious, dynamic, balanced, graceful, complex, fresh, age-worthy, silky, voluptuous, miraculous. We will discover in the coming years if this effusive enthusiasm is justified, but for now, after Covid and wildfires and drought and bugs, we are due for the wondrous magic wine can provide.
Meghan Zobeck, winemaker at Burgess Cellars, told MacNeil: “I’m not sure there will be another vintage quite like this in our lifetime.”
Something wine lovers can look forward to. Thank God.
Last round
I’ve always thought a murder mystery in a textile factory would make a good yarn, Wine time.
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