2010 Harvest: A Beaver’s Take . . .
In this week’s blog I decided I wanted to focus on Niels (owner/founder/Beaver) and his perception of the 2010 harvest at Castoro Cellars. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, this is Niels’ 29th harvest and definitely one of the most interesting harvests to date. This is mainly due to the adverse weather conditions we have experienced this year on the west coast. Most notably we have experienced a very mild summer followed by very unpredictable fall weather that has ranged from rain to frost to 100 degree days. “This is the coldest harvest season we have ever experienced at Castoro, and on top of that we have had multiple days of rain and two morning frosts,” said Niels. This is also the latest harvest Castoro has ever experienced, from the first day to the last.
Last year we got 7 inches of rain in one storm during harvest but since there was no other rain it did not pose too much of a problem. This year it has been more sporadic, which poses more problems for the grapes, especially with molding in the clusters. Niels told me this year has really been a learning experience for him and most notably a lesson in the resilience of the Zinfandel grape. In years past rain has never been much of an issue during harvest and therefore molding in the clusters has not really been much of a concern. Zinfandel is typically one of the last varietals we pick and because of that, it is at a higher risk for molding, exposure to frost and exposure to rain. “There were times this year when I really wanted to pick the Zin early because I was afraid we would lose the crop to rot, molding or frost. Tom and I talked a lot about it and in the end we decided to take the risk of leaving the grapes on the vine to fully ripen. It was definitely a nerve racking experience.” Now we are about a week out from having all of our grapes in and amazingly we have made it out alive and with a very nice crop!
“After all of my worrying about our Zinfandel, it has proved to be a very resilient grape,” said Niels. We did experience some molding in select blocks, but in very small amounts and the impacts of this molding have been very minor. The forecast for the next few days in Paso Robles is warm weather possibly into the 90s, which means all of our grapes remaining on the vine should be good to go by next week. Even with such a roller coaster year, we have seen some amazing fruit and we are very excited to share this vintage with all of you. Not only will the wine be great, it will have a nice story to go along with the journey from the berry to the bottle!!
Cheers,
Luke
