The Weather and the 2012 Vintage

This week we will not be writing about flavor, aroma, labels, bottles, wineries and all the other stuff that we usually write about. This week we will look at the upcoming 2012 vintage. You know that this is an election year and things usually go topsy-turvy during that insane season and this year is no different, even with wine.
While the mid-west baked under unrelenting heat of over 100 degrees for weeks at a time and the southeastern part of the country was drenched in unrelenting rain, the gods of the grape smiled on the major growing districts of the country.
Let’s begin with California, Oregon and Washington where the weather in the grape growing regions was absolutely perfect. Everything that the weather can do to insure an exceptional grape crop was in place. Growers were not rushed to prematurely pick grapes because of impending bad weather conditions, but rather they were able to allow the grapes to linger on the vine and slowly develop to their fullest potential. Not only were the grapes nearly perfect, they were also prolific.
So what does this mean to you? It means that there will be a lot of very good Northwestern wines in the marketplace at all price levels; even the less expensive wines will be better than average. As far as price goes, we do not believe that there will be any significant increase in price because of the quantity that will be available. There will also probably be no decrease in price as the exceptional vintage will allow the winemakers to recoup some of the losses incurred during the past few years.
The story does not end there; there are also other wine grape producing districts in the country. The Lake Erie area in Ohio, Pennsylvania and upstate New York growing districts faired exceptionally well, weather wise. In those areas, it is the Concord grape that reigns supreme and it is the Concord grape that is the main grape variety used to make the sweet red wines. Unfortunately, the variety does not lend itself well to dry wines because, like most northeastern grapes, they have a strange under flavor called foxy that most wine drinkers dislike and was the reason that the early colonists continuously experimented with grape growing, among them Thomas Jefferson. The reason that they could not grow the classical grapes was later found to be Pierces Disease, to which the indigenous vines were immune but the classical vines weren’t.
And now for the bad news; the Mid-West. The new and up-and-coming vineyards and wineries in the Mid-Western states were hammered by both incredibly high heat and severe drought. In the state of Missouri, which ranks tenth in the number of wineries and vineyards, the growers were forced to pick their grapes one to one and a half months early. Despite doing all of the right things to protect their vines, the heat at the beginning of the growing season made the vines flower and set early. Even though they managed to get some grapes, the excessive heat resulted in grapes that were high in sugar and low in fruit acid which leads to rather wimpy wines. To offset the loss of grapes the vintners often use concentrated grape must (juice from other wine grapes) to bolster their wines. For a bit of good news from the Mid-West, their fruit wines should be superb in 2012, due to the increased sugar from the heat.
To sum it all up, even though the wine from the 2012 vintage is now being made, it is the opinion of grape experts that this should be not only an outstanding vintage but a memorable one. When they are released, we will do our job and keep you informed of what is good in the marketplace. Our suggestion is that if you find a wine that you really like from the 2012 vintage, stock up because as time goes by, these wines will probably rise in price.