As California's winemakers begin the 2008 harvest, they are scrambling to find enough Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.
After several years of bumper crops, Mother Nature turned fickle this year, offering up deep frosts, followed by hot weather and ultimately not enough rain.
"This is one of the strangest weather patterns that I have seen in more than 30 years of farming," said Andy Beckstoffer, the largest independent grower on California's North Coast.
Growers and winemakers estimate that the state's grape crop, especially in such prime wine regions as Napa and Sonoma counties and the Santa Rita Hills near Solvang, could be 20% smaller than last year and as much as one-third less than a massive harvest in 2005.
It's likely there won't be enough grapes to meet all the needs of wineries, said Beckstoffer, who has already sold most of what he is growing and came up 5 tons short on a 50-ton order of Sauvignon Blanc grapes last week.
"The growers who have grapes are going to benefit from higher prices, those who lost grapes to the frost and other bad weather will suffer and the wineries that don't have their own vineyards are going to get squeezed," said Rob McMillan, who heads the wine industry lending business at Silicon Valley Bank in St. Helena.
That could translate to fewer bargains on the wine shelves at stores, McMillan says, adding that the slow economy will help keep prices in line for consumers for now.
Winemaker Ken Brown will be paying "more for grapes than I ever have before." The Pinot Noir specialist based in Buellton has contracts to purchase grapes by the acre rather than the ton. And with vineyard yields plunging, that has really hurt him this year. He's on the hook to purchase the output of three acres of grapes from one grower in the Santa Rita Hills that, because of the frost, has lost about 70% of its crop, Brown said.
Only a "not-to-exceed" clause in his contract, which caps the price, has saved this harvest from turning "catastrophically" costly, Brown said.
As the season's first white grapes were being picked last week, Clay Shannon of Shannon Ridge Winery & Vineyards in Lake County said he saw a flurry of interest by wineries in the classic red Cabernet Sauvignon grapes out of fear that supplies would run out in the coming weeks.
"We are short on Sauvignon Blanc and Syrah in a couple of areas," said Joe Hurliman, winemaker for Herzog Wine Cellars in Oxnard.
