Fast and Furious: Paso Harvest 2022

The 2022 vintage in the Paso Robles region will remain difficult to say the least. The scorching, relentless triple-digit heat that unleashed in early September sent winemakers rushing for an early harvest.

Night harvest
Photo Courtesy: Daou Family Estate

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“If there is a winegrower’s vintage, it would be 2022”, declared Daniel Daou when I met him at the top of his hill. Daou Family Domain in the Adelaide district. “Pardon my French, but it’s been a drag,” said the winemaker and co-founder of his eponymous winery known for its Bordeaux-style wines.

“From a physical point of view, it was exhausting,” he continued. “We first received two months of grapes in two weeks. Then the harvest team worked around the clock non-stop, with two shifts, early in the morning and at night.

“The peak of heat came at the worst time: we were two weeks away from harvest. When you rush into the harvest, the sugars increase, but not the physiological maturity. You get tannins in some cases, but you get no color, no texture.

The result is: “You get high tannins with little color or low tannins and no color and the sugars are very high,” Daou explained. “It’s a terrible combination. It is difficult to create a balanced wine.

Yet Daou knew how to manage the tannins. “But it cost us in return. It is also a vintage where you should not be greedy. We produced an average of 1.3 tons per acre.

The Glunz family
Photo credit: Glunz family wine cellar

“It was a difficult vintage from the start,” acknowledged Matthew Glunz of Glunz family wine cellar,which began harvesting in mid-August, which would normally have started in mid-September. “So that was almost a whole month earlier.” Harvesting Cabernet Sauvignon well before Labor Day was not common practice for the family.

“While the early fermentations presented some challenges, we had a couple of rainy days in September that allowed us to hit the pause button,” he added. This allowed him to press the first harvests and the fermentations to finish the skins which impacted the final product. “This step definitely worked in our favour. The first fruits wine is now in the barrel and they are just great.

Glunz invited me to his winery along Highway 46 East for a tank tasting around mid-October. We tasted a dark, inky Petit Verdot, a Cabernet Sauvignon expressing enhanced acidity and a cloudy Viognier showing bright fruit.

Jordan Fiorentini
Photo credit: Epoch Estate Wines

Jordan Fiorentini, whose mantra is “I only let the vineyard do the talking”, admitted that the 2022 vintage was different. “This one, the winemaker has to be selective about,” the winemaker told Wines from the Epoch estate during a telephone conversation, briefly absent from his harvesting duties.

Paso has experienced sudden summer heat spikes in previous years. However, this year the temperature has risen and stayed longer. “We had a temperature of 70 degrees in the morning,” exclaimed Fiorentini.

Between the vineyards of Paderewski and York Mountain, the former could handle the heat well. “But York Mountain has never been used to seeing this heat,” Fiorentini said. “The heat and the dry farm were a double whammy,” she commented on this dry-grown vineyard in the cool York Mountain AVA.

The loss was widespread across varieties and locations. “In some areas we lost 40-50% once we cleaned the fruit; much less in other varieties and regions.

Curtis Hascall and Cynthia Bowser
Photo: Mira Honeycutt

Winemaker Curtis Hascall was sorting the Petit Verdot by hand when I went to see him in Shale Oak Wine Estate in the Templeton Gap area. “We let the Petit Verdot withstand the heat and the rain.” The rain, he added, was almost beneficial because it extended the suspension time. However, like many winemakers, the heat was problematic. “We tried to get as many as possible, but it wasn’t ready. We picked the dry-grown Grenache early and got a third of the raisins.

In the San Miguel de Shale Oak vineyard, the Cabernet Sauvignon was picked a month early. “For sure it’s light in color, so there will be mixes, like the petite sirah for the color.”

Sterling Kragten from Cass wine estate let the fruit hang through the heat and subsequent rainy period. Yes, some of the grapes have shrunk, he admitted. “But when it was cool, the vines would take water from the rain and recover.” As for yields, everything is down this year “but with good concentration and amazing colors”.

Steve and Heather Martell with their daughter Adaline.
Photo: Mira Honeycutt

Atop its 24-acre Willow Creek District hillside estate with spectacular views, Kaleidos Wine owner/winemaker Steve Martell celebrated an end of harvest reunion with his wife Heather, family and friends. “We got three tons this year,” Martell said, pointing to his west-facing 1.3-acre vineyard planted with Rhone varieties. “We started harvesting mid to late heat wave and got a good balance between sugar and acidity.” Martell sources most of the fruit for its small annual production of 500 cases.

Martell pulled from his library a portfolio of older Syrahs dating back to 2001 (his first vintage), followed by 2007, 2008 and a 2005 cab/Syrah blend, plus a 2008 Rhône white blend. These wines were impressive with fruit bright and balanced acidity, a testament to the aging ability of Paso wines.

Scott Shirley
Photo Courtesy: JUSTIN Vineyards & Winery

For Scott Shirley, the early heat prompted to pick Merlot in August. “Because sugars build up quickly, I need to be aware of rising Brix values ​​when making picking decisions, so the resulting alcohol in the finished wines is not unbalanced,” said the winemaker at JUSTIN Vineyards & Cellars in an email exchange.

With successive years of drought, the lack of moisture in the soils is felt more noticeably on the upper part of the steeper slopes, with earlier maturing varieties, he continued. Thin-skinned varieties like Merlot and Malbec are usually the first blocks to be picked after a heat spell. The Cabernet Sauvignon was also picked in early September instead of the usual October. “With these early Cabernet Sauvignon selections, we are looking for more of a fresh red fruit profile, versus darker fruit in vineyard blocks that can enjoy more hanging time,” Shirley commented.

Indeed, the wines of 2022 will require that little bit more from a winemaker. “I must have let everything soak for two or three days,” Glunz thought to himself. “It’s the greatest winemaking I’ve ever done.”

As Paso pioneer Gary Eberle said as he sat in his usual spot in front Eberle Winery to greet guests, “This will be a now vintage drink. No need to age your bottles.

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