“If you were a grape, you would move here,” gushes Garrett Buckland.
A winemaker on the board of the Napa Valley Grape Growers and working as a consultant for Knightsbridge Winery in Sonoma, Buckland said this year’s harvest will produce an abundance of wine that will rival any in the world.
“For wine collectors and wine lovers, the last three years have produced the best wines in the world,” said Buckland.
He was joined in his enthusiasm by Bettina Sichel of Laurel Glen Vineyards.
“Not just another excellent year, but terrific quantities of grapes were harvested early this year. We finished our harvest on Sept. 23 and this year is by far more plentiful then the last three,” said Sichel.
The irony of the past three years of California’s dry weather and warmer then usual winters has been the positive effects it had on wine grape harvests. Buckland noted that even in years where the rest of the state is very dry, the Sonoma areas will usually get sufficient rainfall.
“It’s not the same as growing lettuce or other crops which need a lot of water,” said Buckland, who received his bachelor’s degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California at Davis in 2004. “The beauty of grape vines is they are very drought tolerant. One of the reasons Sonoma wines are so good is that we don’t have to deal with the problems and diseases that can be caused by very rainy years, or rainy summers like in so many other parts of the world.”
Lucas Topolos, the assistant manager at Little Vineyards Winery in Glen Ellen, noted that the early harvest this year made it very easy for the grapes to develop their sugars, and that the production of zinfandels and bordeaux would top their previous harvests.
“These are the golden years,” said Topolos, “2012 through 2014 have been exceptionally good, after the rainy year of 2011 made things very challenging.”
Sichel, who grew up in the wine industry and has been working as a professional vintner for 25 years, said the difference between the last three years and 2011 were stark.
“You had to know what you were doing in 2011,” said Sichel, whose father came from a wine-making tradition in Germany. “It was a very wet year and expertise was what made the difference. But that’s what makes this area so special. It’s not just the weather or the climate, but the farming traditions and expertise of the people involved in the industry. People are what make Sonoma wines so good.”
Buckland agrees, saying that the skilled and passionate labor force of Sonoma can be the distinguishing factor in the regions wine production.
“We have the tools and we have the ability to control our circumstances. That’s what helps make the wines here so wonderful,” said Buckland.
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