Harvest 2025 is in the Barn. It’s officially Halloween tomorrow. Halloween usually marks the transition from the rush of activity to transitioning to sorting out all the little details that happened over the last couple of months. While we are mostly pressed out and barreled down at this point, there are still a few lingering lots taking their sweet time to finish up. Getting things to barrel and tucked away, is a really good feeling. It marks a switch from everything having to be done right now, to a time when we can actually pause and think about the process.Looking at the data over the last five years, 2025 marks our second latest start and our second earliest finish to harvest. This just means that while we started what felt a little slow, things really kicked into high gear and we had somewhat condensed harvest. We had a few times toward the middle and end of harvest where we were struggling to find empty tanks to fill up. It’s always fun, when you have to barrel down a tank so you can free it up to press into, and then that press tank also gets refilled with grapes all in the same day. Luckily, I feel I have one of the best teams in the Napa Valley, and they do it all without a problem. I am the conductor and they are the orchestra, the grapes are the instruments, and we all work together to make really amazing wine.
2025 marks my personal 31st harvest. I can tell you that no two are the same. To be honest, that would be pretty boring. However, in the most challenging of vintages boring seems pretty nice. This year we were marked with a relatively cool summer and kept safe from our normal heat spikes mid late season. This meant a long ripening season. For those of us in the warmer parts of the valley, it is a welcome reprieve from those warmer years. It means that we can take our time, take advantage of really long hang times, and focus in on flavor and the subtle changes the fruit makes on the vine. The chart below show data collected from Western Weather and the differences in the recent vintages in Growing Degree Days
For us 2025 is looking like a great year. We’ve had ideal ripeness without the extreme of high sugars. We work all year to make sure the grapes are perfect, or at least close to it. It’s farming it is never all perfect, and the fun of it is trying to solve the problems that the vine, mother nature, and everything else throw at you. It’s all in the hopes of making every little berry really concentrated with flavor. If we do that, then the winemaking is a lot easier. We had a somewhat easy year this year, and are really excited about what were able to capture in the wines.
A few of the highlights for us. We started the season with our sparkling and our Rose. The Rose for me was just a really fun wine to make. I like the look on my crews’ face every year, we’ve only made it for two years now, when I tell them we are picking some of our best Zinfandel to make this Rose. They almost always want to use something else and save this bit for our Zinfandel. I get a lot of crazy looks, but once the wine is made, hopefully they understand. We have plenty of really good Zin to make our Zinfandel, why would I not push for the best Rose we can do. We also just found out that Vinepair.com named one of our Zinfandels in their list of best of 2025.
There was one Cabernet Franc tank this year, that to me was quintessential Calistoga Cabernet Franc. It was one of my favorite tanks to taste throughout fermentation. It had all the good things that I really love in Cabernet Franc. There were violets, and cherries, chocolate, and a hint of spice all with really good concentration. I’m really glad we’ve planted more of the variety and look forward to making this wine every year. Hopefully we can live up to the Robb Report review, in which we were named this year as one of The 7 Best of St. Helena Cabernets.
Then there was the Malbec and the Petit Verdot. Mostly used as blenders in our wines, but they were so expressive this year. I’m not sure my team noticed as much as I did, but while these two lots were fermenting in the cellar they filled the air with a seductive perfumed fruit. These two lots were so expressive and delicious, it was really fun to see them evolve over fermentation.
There is a lot of really good wine for us this year. Most of it is tucked away in the cellar aging in barrels. They will change and evolve over the next year until we make our base blends. We’re going to have a lot of fun putting these wines together. There is so much to work with this year.