2025 Harvest Journal By Jason Haas
Update 2: Hurry up and wait
Friday, September 26th
At a time when we're usually at the peak of harvest, we instead spent much of the week in a holding pattern. Early Wednesday morning, a rare thunderstorm rolled through, caused by a cutoff low left behind after the passage of tropical storm Mario last week. The rainfall we received (0.35") was modest, but the light show was impressive. From about 2am and lasting about the next two hours, we saw lightning flashes every few seconds and intermittently heavy downpours.
Before you start to worry, a little harvest rain isn't a big deal, or even that rare in winegrowing regions. California is unusual in having very little precipitation in September and October, but most of Europe, including the Rhone, sees at least some rain every month. Unless the quantities are large enough to get down to the root zone or it stays still and humid for long enough to encourage an outbreak of rot, a little rain is fine. It can even bring some benefits, rinsing the accumulated dust off the vines and giving them a little burst of energy for the final push of ripening. The photo to the right is of a second-crop cluster from the Haas Vineyard on Wednesday morning.
More about the two things that you worry about with rain. First, dilution. If enough water gets down to the root zone, the vines can pull that water into the berries and dilute the flavors. At a third of an inch, that isn't going to get deep enough to where most of our roots are, so that's OK. Second, the spread of rot in the vineyard. If it stays wet and humid for a several days, rot spores can proliferate. That tends to be more of an issue in years when you've already seen some degradation of the fruit quality from heat or insects or enough swelling to split some grapes. This year, growing conditions have been great and the fruit quality impeccable.
The rain did push a brief pause, as we waited until today to start picking again. But it wasn't like the grapes were pouring in before this. The moderate weather the past couple of weeks and the outstanding vine health have meant that while we're at sugar levels we could pick at, the acids and overall chemistry have been so good that we decided we could wait just a little longer. Nevertheless, the harvest-by-week graph doesn't look like the classic bell curve:
The fruit that has come in has looked terrific. On the white side, we've harvested two lots of Viognier, four lots of Roussanne, one lot of Marsanne, two lots of Vermentino, one lot of Clairette Blanche, and three lots of Grenache Blanc (pictured, top right). None of these amount to all of what's out in the vineyard, so it's early to make any assessment of what it means for yields, but we were excited that our new planting of Clairette Blanche, on its fourth leaf, brought in eight bins while last year it only produced 2 bins.
On the red side, we've harvested seven lots of Syrah, five lots of Grenache, and one lot each of Muscardin, Cinsaut, and (just today) our first lot of Mourvedre. Of those, only our tiny (0.5 ton) Muscardin lot accounts for everything that's coming in. That was up 10% from last year's 0.46 tons. I don't think there's a lot to conclude from those numbers yet.
If you look at the harvest chalkboard, it's approaching half full. But that probably exaggerates how far into harvest we are. According to Chelsea's estimates, we're only at around 40% done, and it's seeming more likely that we'll exceed those estimates than that we'll fall short. So that means we may look back and realize at this moment that we were only 35% done.
If you're trying to make sense out of the chalkboard (bottom right), here's a cheat sheet. Each line is a separate pick.
- The figure on the left is the date.
- Next (for non-estate wines only) comes the vineyard name, like Shake Ridge or Tofino.
- Then comes the grape.
- Then (for estate wines only) comes a block name or abbreviation, such as NH (short for New Hill) or Jewel West.
- Then, when appropriate, Roman numerals indicate the pick number through a block. We haven't done multiple picks many times yet, but by the time we finish you'll start to see a lot of II's, III's, and even IV's.
- Finally comes the number of tons from that pick.
- The color indicates whether it's estate or purchased fruit, with green being purchased and pink being estate.
As is often the case, we started this year with a higher percentage of non-estate picks, typically whites for Patelin Blanc from warmer parts of Paso Robles, and red grapes (mostly Grenache) that will be direct pressed into Patelin Rosé. This year our early picks also included all our the Lignée de Tablas vineyards, which come from regions further inland. While coastal California has been quite cool this summer, inland areas have been warmer than average. That includes Lodi (source of the Bench Vineyard Vermentino we'll be debuting this year) and the Sierra Foothills that are the source for both our Fenaughty Vineyard red and white and our Shake Ridge Syrah.
Looking forward, our focus is going to be shifting toward reds. Until now, 55% of what we've harvested has been white, and almost half of the reds that we've harvested have been direct-pressed to go into Patelin Rosé. That's going to be changing as the later-ripening reds like Mourvedre, Counoise, and Cinsaut start to get ripe, and as we shift our focus on Grenache to the riper picks that will go into red wines rather than rosés. Scenes like the one below, of Gustavo on the forklift with a bin of Syrah, will become commonplace.
While the pace is sure to pick up, we don't expect anything dramatic in the near term. The weather for the next week looks to have most of our highs in the upper 70s. Those are not exactly the sorts of temperatures that are going to cause rapid movement in ripeness. But that's fine too. There's recency bias that makes it feel unusual, because we've become accustomed to relatively short harvests in recent years, but those years have been anomalies:
- 2022 started early and ended earlier because of sustained heat the whole summer. Duration: 7 weeks.
- The unusually cool year of 2023 didn't get started until the second half of September, and then a warm October allowed us to finish by mid-November. Duration: 7.5 weeks.
- 2024 started at an average time but a very warm harvest season meant that we were done (except for a surprise pick of second-crop clusters) in a blistering 6.5 weeks.
And yet, if you look historically, most of our vintages have seen something more like a 9 week harvest. It seems like 2025 is on pace to follow those years more than the three recent ones.
The condition of the vineyard suggests that we're in good shape to weather an extended harvest. The blocks are still mostly green, at a time of year when they're often starting to turn a ragged brown. The health can also be seen in the clusters, like the Mourvedre (right). It feels like a long time since we've seen such robust, perfect clusters on this often stress-prone grape.
So, as we reach harvest's midpoint, we're excited about where we are. Full speed (such as it is, this year) ahead.
Update 1: A warm August gets things going, then a September cooldown pushes pause
Wednesday, September 10th
Sometimes harvest hits like a ton of bricks. Not this year. We're almost two weeks into the 2025 harvest, and it still feels like things are ramping up. On August 28th, we brought in our first estate lot, off of our oldest Viognier planting. Our next estate pick wasn't until a week later, when we cherry-picked some of the ripest Roussanne off of Jewel Ridge on September 4th, along with our first small lots of Syrah and Grenache. A small Marsanne pick came in the following day. And, at least off of the estate, that's been it so far. We haven't picked anything this week, and aren't expecting to. So, at the end of our third week we've only harvested 23.9 tons off the estate, or about 7% of what we're expecting this year.
Most of what has come into the cellar so far has been for Patelin and Lignée. This isn't surprising; most of Paso Robles has been warmer than our location in west Adelaida, while the vineyards we're sourcing fruit for Lignée this year, in the Sierra Foothills and Lodi, have actually seen above-average warmth even as coastal California has been cooler than average. So the harvest chalkboard (right) is dominated by green (non-estate) lots, while the pink (estate) lots make up the decided minority.
All this is a far cry from last year, when sustained heat compressed the harvest and meant that we felt like we were on a full-out sprint from the beginning. By the end of our third week we had harvested 87 tons off the estate, or 29% of our eventual total.
I'll share some thoughts at the end of the blog as to what this all means, but first I want to set the scene for you and share a few images of these early days of harvest. I'll start with the pick of Pinot Noir from the Haas Vineyard, which this year happened on August 29th. This is always a milestone, and the cellar team traditionally joins the vineyard crew for it. It was promising that the yields were up about 20% compared to last year.
Next (right) a photo of the first pick of Viognier, at night under the lights. We try to pick most of our whites at night because the cooler temperatures are better for the grapes and for our team. Reds, which are sturdier, tend to get picked in the morning. Either way, we're usually done in the vineyard by noon, although the work in the cellar will continue into the evening.
It was encouraging that both the old-block Viognier and the Haas Vineyard Pinot Noir came in about 20% above last year's yields. It's too early to generalize with much confidence from this data, but we have no reason to think that later grapes will be less plentiful than earlier ones. We had a relatively warm spring, which meant that budbreak and flowering happened under benign conditions, and then it turned cool, so we didn't lose any crop to sunburn. Of course, last year's 2.35 tons/acre was about 20% below our 20-year average, so if we did see a 20% gain it would still only bring us back to our long-term normal.
This has been a summer without many of the extremes we're used to enduring in Paso Robles. July was the coolest we've ever recorded, with just one day over 100F, an average high of just 88F, and an average low of 48.8F. August warmed up, with an average high of 95.5F, but nights were still cool at 51.8F and we only had six days top 100F.
The relative slowness of the estate harvest has given us a great chance to focus on our Patelin de Tablas Blanc and Patelin de Tablas Rosé. We've brought in 42 tons of white, or about half what we expect in all, and nearly 20 tons of Grenache for direct-pressing into Patelin Rosé, including the bins below. That's about 30% of what we'll expect this season.
To get a graphical sense of the year, one useful method is cumulative growing degree days, a common measurement of heat accumulation during the growing season. You can see the trend diverge below the long-term average in July and then bend back toward it in August. More recently, you can see it bend back down as the last week has been cool, with highs only in the 70s and low 80s. We're definitely warmer than a year like 2023. But it's still cooler than average:
Another way of looking at the climate compared to average is to sum growing degree days by month and compare that to our averages. Doing so shows that we had a warmer-than-usual May and August but a cooler-than-usual June and July. That's how you get to an average start date to harvest, and why we're at the early edge of the range that I projected in my blog about veraison.
One fun addition to this year's harvest: new puppies! We welcomed two new Turkish Boz guardian dogs to the team on August 25th, just a few days before harvest kicked off. Regenerative Specialist Erin Mason has been introducing them to the Spanish Mastiffs and the flock of sheep bit by bit, but they've also been coming along with her on some of the picks. They're about 40 pounds now at 14 weeks and growing fast. They'll be 180 pounds each, eventually.
I asked a few key members of our team for their impressions. Senior Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Franchi provided this:
As (almost) always at this point in harvest, spirits are high and numbers are looking great. We have a strong intern team that’s doing a good job getting their feet under them before things really start cranking in earnest. The moderate, languid spring and summer have provided us with an ideal start to harvest 2025, with the fruit arriving in rolling waves. The weather this week has been perfect to allow things to ripen at a leisurely pace while still maintaining acids and the numbers we’re seeing in the samples are reflecting that reality. The cellar smells rich with fermentation from a huge week last week, but this week has been mellow and relaxed. I think we’re all excited to get into the hard rhythm of things, but taking the time to appreciate this brief lull in action.
Vineyard Operations Manager Austin Collins agreed:
Chelsea has summed the beginning up quite eloquently, as she does. I would absolutely agree with what she has said. We were slammed with grapes last week (mostly whites for Patelin). This week is very much the opposite. The samples that have been coming in for the fruit still on the vines are quite promising. Acid and sugar levels are lining up pretty much exactly the way we would want them to be. This is really nice to see! As the weather continues to be incredibly mild here the ripening will be slow but constant and predictable. The fruit is seemingly retaining great acidity as well. Its noon here currently and it is 71 degrees outside, crazy!
So, that's the report as we finish our third week. Things look good. The vines are still healthy. Crop levels look better than last year, though probably not much above our long-term averages. And the team is in good spirits and ready for the next push.
I'll leave you with one last photo: of the main work table in the cellar. It's got all the hallmarks of the season. The team's water bottles. The bounty of the staff garden and our biodiversity, including fresh flowers, figs, and tomatoes. And the leg of prosciutto that Neil has brought in to provide snacks, each harvest for over a decade. A happy team makes joyful wines.
