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September's Best Wine Crush and Harvest parties

9/18/2016

Whether you’re a longtime local or a first-time visitor, the excitement of the season never dims. Harvest is one of the best times to plan a winery visit, to witness the hustle and bustle of sorting, stemming, crushing, and the beginning of fermentation.
When all is done, you’ll have a greater appreciation for the tremendous work it takes to make that beautiful wine you’re sipping. But you’ll also have an insider’s peek into the true fun and joy that goes into it, too. Check out a few of our favorite late September, early October events.

Quivara Farm To Table

Quivira Winery Farm to Table Dinner

It’s quintessential Sonoma County, dining right in the middle of the vineyards, under the stars, surrounded by flowers and organic vegetables in the Quivira garden. Be an indulgent locavore with these Dry Creek Valley Estate dinners, where you can see the grapes in full ripening mode, ask the winemaker his secrets of the trade, and visit with farm manager Jim Barausky for how the goodies were grown and raised for the four-course wine paired dinners. New this year: meals are prepared by top restaurants including Calavera, Madera, and AQ.

Cost: Get tickets by calling 707-431-8333.
Details: September 18, 2016, 4900 W. Dry Creek Road, Healdsburg, 707-431-8354

Sonoma Valley Crush
Experience harvest, hands-on, as you enjoy a one-of-a-kind, behind-the-scenes look at every aspect from picking grapes, to crush, to fermentation. Interactive fun at 15 wineries across Kenwood and Glen Ellen includes grape sampling in the vineyards, crush pad tours, and tasting fresh pressed juices like Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Cost for a Crush Wine Tasting Pass is $35 ($45 at the door)

Details: Pass gives you full access to harvest activities and wine tastings from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m, Sept. 16-18, 2016.

Sonoma Valley Crush

20th Annual Kendall-Jackson Heirloom Tomato Festival
Tomatoes ripen at about the same time as grapes. So Kendall-Jackson celebrates both fruits, with wonderful harvests. Plan to spend the entire day at the Kendall-Jackson Wine Center for an extravaganza showcasing more than 175 heirloom tomato varieties in a flurry of exotic names like Blue Fruit and Peace Vine, alongside tomato-inspired recipes from some 50 notable chefs plus wine samples of all kinds, drawing from Kendall-Jackson’s expansive collections including Vintner’s Reserve, Avant, Stature, Jackson Estate, and Grand Reserve.
Cost: $95-$175.

Details: Sept. 24, 2016, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., 5007 Fulton Road, Santa Rosa, 800-769-3649

Kendall-Jackson Tomato Festival

42nd Annual Sonoma County Harvest Fair
This annual event brings so much more than just showcasing award-wining wine and beautiful food. Newer attractions include educational demonstrations, a cooking competition, expanded interactive tastings, and a sharpened focus on local and artisanal products. The highlight remains the Grand Tasting, with three days of sampling from 150+ wineries, including the opportunity to purchase bottles at a Fair-direct discount. Don’t miss the marketplace tasting seminars where you can learn about farming wine grapes, winemaking, and wine appreciation, directly from the winery owners and winemakers. Also new: the World Championship Grape Stompruns three days, instead of two, offering even more opportunity for messy fun and great prizes like $1,500 cash.

Championship Grape Stomp

Details: Sept. 30-Oct, 2-4, 2016, Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa

Here Comes the Crush

9/5/2016

Grape picking, closely followed by the crush, and then the harvest, is now taking place up and down the Napa Valley. Harvest can stretch from late July and into November, but the vast majority takes places in September and October - two months that are often considered the best time to visit Napa, Sonoma, and nearby cities. The high temperatures of summer give way to a slightly cooler Indian summer and shorter days lend themselves to beautiful sunsets across the valley.

Several factors play a role in deciding when grape-picking begins. These include the grape variety itself; its location in the Napa Valley; the influence of microclimates throughout the valley (i.e. fog, exposure); winemaking styles; soil types (looser, gravelly soils tend to ripen grapes early; heavier, clay soil, later); and how the season’s weather impacts the overall harvest. There are certainly overlaps and sometimes block by block picking, but we’ve done our research to give you a sense of which wines comes in when and why.

Sparkling WineGrapes for sparkling wine are usually the first to be picked to ensure the bright acidity that winemakers are looking for in sparkling wines. The primary grape varieties harvested for Napa Valley sparkling wines are Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, the majority of which are from the cooler Carneros region.

Sauvignon Blanc and other Aromatic White WinesSauvignon Blanc and other “aromatic” white wine grapes, like Riesling, Pinot Grigio or Chenin Blanc, are typically the next varietals of Napa Valley fine wine grapes to be brought from vineyard to crush pad. These grapes tend to mature earlier than most other grapes, as the citrus, tropical and other fruit flavor profiles that exude the enticing and sometimes bracingly refreshing scents are articulated at a particular acid/sugar ratio that requires less heat and time on the vine.

Chardonnay
Winemakers creating lighter styles of Chardonnay are looking for slivers of bright acids showing through; those making Chardonnay with a sense of nectar are looking for slightly more developed sugars, translating to more time in the sun. Deeper, richer flavors of pear or caramel in Chardonnay typically take time in wood barrels and express a note or two of butter.

Pinot NoirOur transition from the harvest of white wine grapes to red shifts with this delicate grape variety. As with all classified wines, there are many expressions of a particular fine wine grape; Pinot grapes picked earlier have a fresh, plummy appeal and red tones; those picked later have a somewhat denser mouth feel and concentrated black fruit flavor. Key qualities include sweetness without astringency or tartness, the perfect pendulum of sugars and acids as harvest swings from late summer into fall.

Earlier Reds
Red wine grape varieties such as Merlot, Zinfandel, Cabernet Franc, Syrah and Sangiovese are often picked in advance of the most intense period of harvesting Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. These red wine grape varieties tend to flower earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon; they typically have thinner skins; and are usually less dependent on phenolic development (tannins) than many Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.

Cabernet Sauvignon
There are a multitude of variables that go into when Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are picked: the location of the vineyards within the Napa Valley’s 16 nested AVAs and the many microclimates in our region; hillside or valley floor fruit; whether the vines are on the eastern slope (which receives more hours of sunshine) vs. the western slope (which receives somewhat less sunshine); what type of soil the grapes are grown in; and the style of wine that the winemaker ultimately seeks to create. The harvesting of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in the Napa Valley begins later than most other varieties and typically lasts the longest. In some years that may mean the middle of November before Napa Valley’s harvest of grapes to make dry wines is officially considered “done!”

So get out and enjoy the crush and the harvest this year! And keep these timelines in mind as you taste each (and every) bottle!

September's Best Wine Crush and Harvest parties

Here Comes the Crush

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