Vineyard workers dump L'Ecole No. 41 grapes into a bin at the Seven Hill Vineyard in MiIlton-Freewater, early Friday , Sept. 23, 2022.
In the pre-dawn light, a vineyard worker reaches for a cluster of grapes at the Seven Hill Vineyard in Milton-Freewater, Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.
Intern Sophie Martin dumps some semillon grapes that she will hand smash to extract juice in the testing room at L'Ecole No 41, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
Intern Sophie Martin loads a few drops of semillon juice into an OenoFoss analysis machine in the testing room at L'Ecole No 41, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
Intern Sophie Martin shows a small amount of semillon juice which she has taken out of the centrifuge before going into an OenoFoss analysis machine in the testing room at L'Ecole No 41, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
Marcus Rafanelli with a number of beakers of grape juice from various vineyards in the testing room at L'Ecole No 41, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
Vineyard workers in the pre-dawn light pick L'Ecole No. 41 grapes at the Seven Hill Vineyard in Milton-Freewater, Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.
A vineyard worker reaches for a cluster of grapes on a L'Ecole vine at the Seven Hill Vineyard in Milton-Freewater, early Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.
A foreman does a quick clean-out of leaves from a bin of grapes at the Seven Hill Vineyard in Milton-Freewater, early Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.
Marcus Rafanelli, L'Ecole No 41, Sept. 26, 2022.
Vineyard workers dump L'Ecole No. 41 grapes into a bin at the Seven Hill Vineyard in MiIlton-Freewater, early Friday , Sept. 23, 2022.
As summer turns to fall, winemakers and viticulturists across the Walla Walla Valley have been keeping a close eye on their grapes, deciding when to pull the trigger and begin the 2022 harvest.
It’s later in the season than usual for the start of harvest, attributed to a cooler-than-average May and June and particularly frosty April, said Sadie Drury, an award-winning winemaker who oversees eight local vineyards, including Seven Hills Vineyard.
Vineyard workers in the pre-dawn light pick L'Ecole No. 41 grapes at the Seven Hill Vineyard in Milton-Freewater, Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.
For Drury, the first harvest finally began early last week, about two weeks later than normal. Despite the delay, the grapes appear to be of particularly high quality and slightly above-average quantity, Drury said.
Though harvest has just begun, winemakers have been out in the fields for months, monitoring the grapes during “veraison,” when the grapes begin to change color from green to red or yellow, depending on the variety.
A vineyard worker reaches for a cluster of grapes on a L'Ecole vine at the Seven Hill Vineyard in Milton-Freewater, early Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.
During that period when ripening gets underway, sugars begin to move from the roots to the berries, and winemakers need to constantly check in on the grapes’ sugar levels, pH, and “TA”, which stands for titratable acidity or total acidity. While pH refers to how acidic or alkaline a wine is, TA measures all of the different acids — malic, lactic, tartaric and many others — that effect the wine in various ways.
All of these metrics help winemakers decide when it is time to start harvesting their grapes from their estate vineyards or the various blocks they have contracted, said Taylor Oswald, winemaker for the relatively new Echolands Winery in Walla Walla.
But there’s as much of an art as a science to that decision, Oswald added, and winemakers faced with the same metrics could make very different choices.
A foreman does a quick clean-out of leaves from a bin of grapes at the Seven Hill Vineyard in Milton-Freewater, early Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.
“There’s there’s a lot that goes on and different people — same grape, same site — make completely different decisions, and not incorrectly,” he said. “They’re just different tastes.”
With the cooler start to the year and subsequent delays to the grape growing process, the grapes didn’t have as much time to accumulate sugars before otherwise ripening, said Marcus Rafanelli, winemaker at L’Ecole No. 41.
Marcus Rafanelli, L'Ecole No 41, Sept. 26, 2022.
“The fruit can be ripe without the numbers always being what they should be, and that’s happening this year,” Rafanelli said. “There’s a lot of physiological ripening at lower sugar levels, which is awesome for winemaking.”
The fruit’s sugar content, measured in the winemaking industry as “Brix,” indicates how high the alcohol levels will be in the wine once the grapes have been fermented. At higher alcohol levels, the yeast struggles to finish fermenting the wine, Rafanelli said, and he prefers to work with grapes generally lower in sugar.
Intern Sophie Martin loads a few drops of semillon juice into an OenoFoss analysis machine in the testing room at L'Ecole No 41, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
The atypical cold spring, coupled with the cold nights typical for Washington grape growers, may also have allowed the fruit to retain more of its natural acidity, Rafanelli said, though he said he’s interested to see how the final product has been impacted by a relatively hot summer.
The blistering heat waves last summer depleted those acids, because grape vines shut down in high heat and will metabolize organic acids to survive, said Walla Walla Community College Director of Viticulture Joel Perez during the 2021 harvest season. That lower acid can impact the color, stability and taste of the wine, he said.
Intern Sophie Martin dumps some semillon grapes that she will hand smash to extract juice in the testing room at L'Ecole No 41, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
As veraison is underway, Oswald makes regular trips to the blocks where his grapes are being grown, calculates how many clusters he will need for a representative sample size, then crushes the sample clusters. For white wine grapes, he will work with just the juice, and with reds he will let them macerate on the skins for a while before testing.
In the pre-dawn light, a vineyard worker reaches for a cluster of grapes at the Seven Hill Vineyard in Milton-Freewater, Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.
While Oswald said he sends the samples out to a third-party laboratory for testing, L’Ecole is one of the few wineries in the Walla Walla Valley that has its own in-house testing facility, Rafanelli said.
Testing has to be done by block, because grapes in different vineyards can differ significantly, even if they are the same variety. L’Ecole uses grapes from around 100 different blocks from 26 vineyards, some maturing earlier in the season than others, and each block is tested five to eight times prior to harvest, Rafanelli said.
Marcus Rafanelli with a number of beakers of grape juice from various vineyards in the testing room at L'Ecole No 41, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
These assorted metrics can be a useful tool for winemakers, helping them decide when to start harvest and survey how the grapes have fared in a particular year or location. But by far the most important metric is how the grapes taste, Rafanelli and Oswald agreed.
Intern Sophie Martin shows a small amount of semillon juice which she has taken out of the centrifuge before going into an OenoFoss analysis machine in the testing room at L'Ecole No 41, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
“The first metric is always flavor,” Rafanelli said.
Both Rafanelli and Oswald reported that this year’s grapes appear to be of high quality. Oswald noted that, of the vintages he’s made, his favorite is 2019, which was a particularly cold year.
But the delayed start could lead to a compressed harvest, Oswald added, which may prove tricky for some businesses already constrained by a tight labor market.
“Fortunately, I work with people that have been able to plan ahead and take care of those issues, but I know that it’s very much a struggle this year trying to find part-time seasonal work,” Oswald said.
Vineyard workers in the pre-dawn light pick L'Ecole No. 41 grapes at the Seven Hill Vineyard in Milton-Freewater, Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.
This story has been updated to correct misspellings.
Emry Dinman can be reached at emrydinman@wwub.com or 425-941-5829.
Reporter covering agriculture, Walla Walla city and county government, and other topics.
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