Fall Harvests: 1998

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Harvest 1998 -- In Short, Short

We are pressing-off our last pinot noir fermentation batch today and we can say that Vintage 1998 is the proverbial two-edged sword. Magnificent, deep, intense wines from a crop so small many vineyards could be growing grapes for their banks next year. Based on our own results and validated by our Willamette Valley friends we have seen:

* In short, possibly better quality than 1994.
* Even shorter, less crop than 1994 (1.29 tons/acre on our three estate vineyards, compared to 1994's 1.55 tons/acre and normal years' 2.5-3.0).
* In the shorts-it's where the area's grape growers will take it for yielding a piddling crop.

Not a Weak Lot in the Cellar
Cheryl and I have marveled at the depth of this year's wine, which was aided by the impeccable health of the fruit (although fully sorted, all pinot noir discards weighed probably less than I do-well I'm not as huge as I look in the photos!). The uniformity of fruit quality, perfect fermentations, and consistent small berry size from all three estate vineyards gave amazing wine quality going into barrel and no weak lots at all. Our main task this vintage was to keep extraction and bigness under control, so that finesse and balance, hallmarks of pinot noir, were maintained in a potentially overwhelming year. The results Lynnette Hudson, a New Zealand winemaker helping at crush, described as "totally awesome fruit, not overextracted, with silky tannins." All varietals look equally good and similarly small in yield.

Why so small a crop? Weather was lousy early in the year, causing incomplete pollination of clusters, but then turning dry and warm until well into harvest, giving only a little rain when we needed it to forestall dehydration of berries. That meant a small number of berries and tiny ones at that, giving us what is called in the jargon "high skin-to-berry ratio." Results: big, deep, intense Pinot noirs. When the average yield for Pinot is 1.32 tons per acre at Ridgecrest, 0.93 at Corral Creek, and 1.68 at Stoller Vineyards you would expect intensity. Expect all the best Upper Willamette Valley Pinots to be very hard to come-by from 1998. The excellent combination of quality and quantity of 1997 is looking better and better all the time.

Approximate volumes from 1998 are as follows, with the decrease from 1997:

* TOTAL-6000 cases, down 37%
* Pinot noir-3100 cases, down 43%
* Chardonnay-1025 cases, down 25%
* Pinot gris-1500 cases, down 10%.

A year like 1998 brings out the best in us. Philosophically we can see it as a glass full or empty. Or realistically as both! As a supreme optimist's only disparaging word might come on his deathbed, "Life's so great that I can only complain there's not more of it." Ah, falling on the two-edged sword!