Harvest Blogs | Willamette Valley Wineries

2024 HARVEST REPORTS

#WVHARVEST2024

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Browse reports from previous vintages below.

Kate Payne Brown - Winemaker, Ambar Estate

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2024

We are excited to release three new Ambar Estate wines in October: the 2022 Dundee Hills Chardonnay, 2022 Sacra Terra Pinot Noir, and 2022 Lustral Chardonnay. While we’re still busy in the cellar, I wanted to take a moment to sit down, rest my feet, and express my gratitude for what has been a beautiful and memorable vintage. This marks my 21st harvest and my 4th with Ambar Estate, and I can confidently say I’ve seen the full range of what Oregon’s seasons can offer. But this year, Mother Nature has been the perfect co-conspirator.

The 2024 growing season brought us a cooler summer, allowing the fruit to ripen slowly and evenly, preserving the fresh acidity that defines our wines. This led to a slightly later harvest than usual, starting with our sparkling program on September 6th. The moderate weather continued into early fall, providing an ideal window for our Chardonnay a couple of weeks later, and then Pinot Noir about a week after that. The combination of daytime warmth and cooler nights is exactly what makes the Willamette Valley such a renowned wine region, and this vintage is the quintessential expression of classic Oregon.

We wrapped up the harvest on September 26th, bringing in the last clusters from the vineyard. With each stage, we watched the fruit develop remarkable complexity and elegance. The cooler evenings maintained vibrant acidity, while the long, steady ripening period gave the grapes deep, expressive flavors and refined tannins.

Now, as our attention turns to winery operations, I’m thrilled by what I’m seeing in the cellar. The sparkling base wine has finished fermentation and has been tucked away until we start preparing for tirage bottling. Our Chardonnays are continuing to ferment both in barrel and in our concrete cube, and our Pinot Noirs are just starting to kick off fermentation. The winery is alive with buzzing forklifts, heady fermentative aromas, and a harvest playlist that keeps us moving. These are the harvests we dream about and the ones we will continue to talk about for years to come!

KATE PAYNE BROWN, Winemaker
Ambar Estate

James Cahill, Winemaker at North Valley Vineyards

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2024

When the vines flower in June, we expect that it will take about 100 days to ripen Pinot Noir and thus we can forecast a harvest period. This year we were pretty certain we would be busy picking grapes the week of 23rd September and this appears to be likely.

We will begin harvest with Chardonnay and a little Pinot Noir for Rosé. Chardonnay will come from Gran Moraine and our Aegrina Estate, Pinot Noir for Rosé also from Aegrina. Among our Pinot Noir vineyards, we will likely start in the Dundee Hills (Thoma), then Yamhill Carlton, Aegrina (Mac), Xomni (E-A) and likely finish at the North Valley Estate (YC).

Thus far, 2024 has been a fine growing season with a modest crop load and moderate August temps. A couple of 100F degree days last week escalated grape sugars, which we can already see “recalibrating”. The weather forecast has my attention. We will see measurable precipitation during this evening and into tomorrow. That’s fine. But it looks like more rain may be on the way early next week. This scenario is not bleak, could be better. My apprehension builds if we start looking at cycle of rain events like these. Hence, we watch the weather.

Stay tuned.

In the coming days, after the rain and some time to dry out, we will begin rigorous sampling of grapes from all vineyards. With data and the experience of tasting the fruit we will refine our harvest decisions.

The goal is to achieve meaningful ripeness without things getting too sweet; we want to avoid "over ripeness" as much as "under ripeness". This requires patience... and faith.

JAMES CAHILL, Winemaker
North Valley Vineyards / La Biblioteca
26th Harvest in the Willamette Valley

POTTER'S VINEYARD - 09.06.24

What are you most excited about for this vintage? Excited to see the very small to medium sized clusters with a normal yield. This means a bigger skin to juice ratio exemplified by some of our best vintages. In years past these factors have resulted in more complexity and if we are able to harvest when we want to, we should see another vintage that fully expresses the quality of the fruit from our vineyard.
What are you harvesting this year and when? This year we are harvesting Pinot Noir for Rosé, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Anything new? The Sauvignon Blanc is a new varietal from Southern Oregon and we are doing our first Oregon Chardonnay! Send good vibes for another stellar vintage!

Bill Sanchez | Owner

#WVHARVEST2023

Durant Vineyards | Dundee Hills AVA

Picking Pinot noir

Paul Durant & Spencer Spetnagle

2023 HARVEST REPORTS

#WVHARVEST2023

Follow the latest harvest tag on Instagram.
Browse reports from previous vintages below.

2023 Harvest Outlook from Elk Cove on Vimeo.

“The decision about when to harvest these grapes is by far the most important decision I make as a winemaker every year. And to get out there and to stomp around the vineyards, to do your own sampling, to taste the grapes on the vine, to look at the canopy, to look at the health, you can really start to gain a picture for what you might choose to do in the winery in terms of extraction and the amount of time it’s gonna spend in a tank what barrels it’s gonna go into. Everything we see and taste in the vineyard reflects on what we do in the winery.”

ADAM CAMPBELL
Owner/Winemaker, Elk Cove Vineyards

ANAM CARA CELLARS - 10.16.23

Our breezy vineyard generally cruises to a late pick, but with the soggy Spring and budbreak three weeks behind normal, we anticipated an even later harvest with all the challenges of 2011. However, by late July it became obvious that the vines had other plans and were responding to the comfortably dry, sunny weather. The vineyard was on a maturation curve that we hadn't seen in over 20 years.

We rested after a small pick of young vines in early September, then watched as the numbers surged and flavors followed. We picked the remaining vineyard at the end of the month, beating the rains by a day. It was also the first time that the Riesling came in alongside the Pinots, but the fruit was delicious, clean and ready. The young wines are showing great potential even at this early stage.

SHEILA NICHOLAS
Nicholas Vineyard | Chehalem Mountains AVA

WALNUT RIDGE - 10.16.23

Our harvest season rolled in like a hurricane this year at Walnut Ridge. Our west facing estate vineyard told a tale of two harvests this vintage. The Summer growing season was free of rain and full of long hot days.

Sept 17th was our first day of Harvest. It felt like sugar levels jumped overnight. Our Emma block (aka the Queen) of Pinot Noir along with, our Pinot Gris told us they were ready simultaneously. Emma is generally one of our last picked pinot blocks so this was interesting! The intensity of picking the fruit that was ready took about 10 days. Day after day of BIG picks had us all running on adrenaline and excitement. Getting this beautiful fruit to cellar before the rains moved in was a ticking clock.

Our team of vineyard crew, tasting room crew and friends have been a complete joy to work alongside during these busy moments and days. Sharing lunch together each day after a long morning pick, made our time together even sweeter.

Interesting times continued to unfold and blocks of pinot were discovered that needed more time and patience to hang longer. It was hard to make sense of these delays compared to the rare urgency Emma block expressed. The numbers on sugar and PH levels told a story of patience and we simply had to wait.

Initial rains moved in and we all took a deep breath and a nap. Mother Nature provided a second pick window for us at the end of the first week in October. We all geared up for a pick of ALL of the remaining fruit, including multiple varietals. Our Riesling didn't want to miss all the fun and chaos so she was ready the same day too!

It's been a wild ride for us this season. Though Walnut Ridge has been producing wine grapes since 1995, this was only our 3^rd harvest and dear friends continue to tell us, "no two vintages will ever be alike."

The wines being made from this tale of two harvests will be one for the books. Such beautiful fruit with yields being up in comparison to the last few seasons. If harvest 2023 taught us one thing, that's to buckle up! You never know what's coming.

ALISHA YOUNG
Walnut Ridge Vineyard | Lower Long Tom AVA

PONZI VINEYARDS - 10.03.23

Harvest is in full swing at Ponzi Vineyards! Our team of international interns have arrived and are working long days to hand sort and process the beautiful Pinot noir we are receiving from across our vineyards. Interns have traveled from Germany, New Zealand, Brazil, Australia, and Denmark to contribute to the 2023 vintage.

Thoughts from Ponzi Vineyards Winemaker Luisa Ponzi
We began harvest in early September with sparkling wines and Chardonnay and are looking forward to a forecast of clear days and very cold nights to receive Pinot noir over the coming weeks. The expectation is intense color, bright acidity and an emphasis on spice aromatics coming from the temperatures dropping almost 30 degrees at night. In terms of weather and fruit condition, this season is reminiscent of 2012 – an epic vintage in Oregon wine history. In addition to interns, we had some extra helping hands last week. From the earliest days of the winery, Dick and Nancy Ponzi invited friends annually to pick fruit, repaying them with Nancy’s famous sticky buns. This tradition has morphed into Staff Pick Day, an opportunity for Ponzi staff members to head to the fields together. We met early, picked bright, plump Pinot noir grapes from Avellana Vineyard, and enjoyed sticky buns from Chef Nathan afterwards.

COMPRIS VINEYARD - 10.02.23

If we were tasked with agreeing on a synopsis of the ’23 vintage, I think we would all agree it would be “Fast and Furious”! We went into the first full week of September with a solid game plan of cleaning pick bins and fermentation tanks as soon as the first measurable rains since April had passed and getting prepared for the upcoming harvest. Certainly there would be time, it had just rained, which meant the grapes would absorb moisture and be less concentrated, sugars would be down, it would take a few days more of sunshine to get them exactly where we wanted them. A little voice inside my head told me, “sample the grapes” (picture the “if you build it, they will come” bit from Field of Dreams). So, on a whim, I sampled the grapes the morning of September 6^th and had an “Oh Sh**” moment. Concerned that we were in jeopardy of missing our optimal picking window, we went into scramble mode and boy did our Compris family come through. Wayne and Patsy dropped everything and came out right away to pressure wash bins. Chris hopped on a plane from Chicago and was here by midnight that night. Wayne, Patsy and Chris were joined by John, Keith and Vickie the next morning at 6am to help Erin, Ryan, Aaron and I kick off harvest. We all spent the next three days bringing in all of the Pinot noir with Lukas, Molly and MacKenzie coming in on the last day to get us across the finish line. In the end we had a winner in yellow jacket bites, Chris with six, a new name for the dried up grapes that we painstakingly picked out of each cluster, grape nuts (we are all unified in boycotting the cereal brand as a result as well), and a vintage that we ended up nailing in quality, ripeness, sugars and acid.

At times it felt like we were living by the Fast and Furious movie character’s, Dom Toretto, catchphrase of living life “a quarter mile at a time”, but like he also said, “It don’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning’s winning”. We think we have a winning vintage on our hands and we can’t wait to share it with all of you!

DRU ALLEN
Compris Vineyard | Chehalem Mountains AVA

ANACRÉON - 09.20.23

Kipp and I are excited that Harvest is upon us!! Our vineyard crew has picked the majority of the fruit from our estate Belle Colline Vineyard. We have one final pick scheduled for this Friday - the "second pick" of our Chardonnay blocks. We are expecting perfect weather for harvesting the last of the grapes - 75 degrees for the high, with 47 degrees for the morning low. This is optimal for gathering the last of our 2023 vintage. We will pick early, while it is cool, and get those baby grapes into the cellar for pressing.

Overall, the 2023 vintage was fantastic!! We experienced some warm spells during the summer months but nothing too extreme. It was relatively dry, having no rain since early May (outside of a small shower on the last day of August). We farm our estate vineyard organically, with no irrigation. When the weather is dry, the grapevines are forced to push their roots further into the earth to find a water source. This is actually good for the vines and stregthens them over time.

HAAKON/LENAI - 09.08.23

Warm summer months kept the maturing at a fast pace. Late august weeks cooled off at night starting complex diurnal shift flavor development.. we began picking our estate chardonnay on the 8th of September @ 700 ft elevation.

Our estate Pinot noir came in on the 21st of September…

Flavor development through September created layers of flavor and perfect acidity for our region..

Were so excited for what this vintage will bring for Haakon Lenai Winery and Oregon wine lovers!

MARQUEE & CODY WRIGHT
Haakon/Lenai | Dundee Hills AVA

WETZEL ESTATE - 09.03.23

Harvest is around the corner, and with it comes the ordering of fermentation supplies, including yeast, nutrients, enzymes, tannins, and oak products. Mark is overseeing our master production spreadsheet. In the cellar, Nate and Rich are shifting their focus to maintenance and repair of the equipment that will be in use soon. This year that includes a new bladder for our second press, and a check for the integrity of all the wine hoses. They will also be involved in emptying tanks of wine to barrel, to open cpacity of the new vintage.

Joe, our harvest intern, will be focused on general cellar sanitation and cleaning. Tanks, valves, and gaskets all need to be inspected and sanitized prior to harvest. Presses, must pumps, and the de-stemmer must be cleaned and lubricated, and all areas related to production must be properly prepared and sanitized.

As we move into September, we will receive and process on and off-site fruit samples. Basic chemistry analyses will guide and determine picking times. Fruit will likely begin to arrive the second or third week of the month. Of course, everything becomes weather-dependent, and we will soon know if a four- or six-week harvest is in store for our team.