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In a nutshell: buy 2007 wines only from reliable producers.

Obviously a vintage is a concept: it cannot taste bad. The point here is to indicate that vine growers have had more problems this year than previous years. The quality of the wines very much depends on the vine growing — every year but this year even more so. This is the year when the serious, talented winemaker makes a big difference.

The Austrian wine marketing board have published their official summary of the vintage so far, calling it ‘the winemaker’s year’. In the words of Jancis Robinson this means that ‘there have been quite a few hurdles for them to overcome - in the vineyard perhaps even more than in the winery’.

In France, the cool summer of 2007 affected everyone and the September weather saved some grapes. Micro-climates came into play and the savvy vigneron had to carefully determine the date of harvest. Rot and mildew was widespread. Keeping the grapes on the vines was a gamble many winemakers did not make.

Côte d’Or, Burgundy

Reports Bill Nanson: ‘The vintage will be as heterogeneous as the approaches and the quality of grapes and sorting’. ‘Grapes from Latricières-Chambertin needed quite some work (just like in 2004)’.
Said Louis-Michel Liger-Belair: ‘we made a hard triage’.
Reports Martine Saunier, California importer of some growers in Burgundy and the Rhône Valley: ‘beginning 25 August, the weather warmed up and the sun finally came out. Temperatures rose to 25°-30° C. The grapes started turning red immediately’.

More reports

I have made complementary overviews:

• Oregon, Burgundy and Bordeaux vignerons explain harvesting and winemaking;
• Reports of bad grape growing conditions in the USA, Germany, France and Italy.

The harvest comes when the fruit is ripe. This occurs at the end of summer for grapes. So the harvest is not currently under way in places where spring is arriving. Such places include South Africa and Australia.

Vitis vinifera is currently harvested in the Northern hemisphere. You have other options for obtaining wine grapes. I’ll talk about them in the upcoming guide to making your own wine starting in a week.

Harvesting is very hard work and is labor intensive.

The Northern hemisphere shows grape harvest about two or three weeks earlier than usual. In Western Europe this is not because the summer was sunny and dry like in 2003. It was not. “In 2007, the whole season was early, right from the budding, because of the mild winter and spring” said Luca Vietti, winemaker at the Vietti winery, in the Piedmont (as reported by the Wine Spectator).

Harvest in the first half of August only concerns some white grapes. The regions where vintners began harvesting in the first half of August are:

• In the USA: the Napa Valley in California;
• In France: Alsace and Roussillon;
• In Italy: Lazio, Veneto and Trentino.

Other websites show recent reports on the current harvest: in California, in Texas, in North Carolina, in New York, in France (there and there), in Italy, in Germany. The present post is the first in a series on the grape harvest. The series will end with a snap view of the 2007 vintage. Your feed reader will be automatically updated of the posting if you subscribe.

Don’t believe mentions of a good vintage yet: it’s too early to address this fuzzy concept: wait until the wine is made! Still we already know that it will be very difficult for even expert winemakers to make good wine in the following parts: Texas, Bordeaux, Puglia and Sicily.

Later articles on the vintage are here:

• Oregon, Burgundy and Bordeaux vignerons explain harvesting and winemaking;
• The 2007 vintage would be bad in Europe.