Brilliant Harvest

It's funny how, in my experience, harvest is typically so stressful. Particularly because I am in West Vancouver the majority of the time looking at Penticton weather reports. I tend to rely on the service that offers the most agreeable forecast. That's usually Accuweather, which I'm particularly fond of, because they use the word "brilliant" when describing sunny days and I like that.  Last year my wife Trish and I were in Hawaii at the end of harvest (first week of Nov) celebrating our 30th Anniversary and I spent hours on end trying to figure out how we were going to get our last 30 tons of fruit in. Here was the problem, we harvest 6 tons a day which means we need 5 dry days. The forecast only showed 3 days before a large wet system settled in. I stewed about it the whole time. The reality of Okanagan forecasts is that they are significantly less all encompassing. On the coast, when they forecast 40% chance of rain it usually can be counted on to rain 40% of the time. When I called our winery in Penticton, distraught about the forecast our Cellar Master Gabe casually informed me "hey John it's only saying 40%....that means it'll be dry!" Indeed it was. 2012 was a fantastic vintage, ripe fruit that is growing in it's complexity.

That brings us to the current harvest, while we still have our Cabs, Syrah and Petit Verdot hanging ALL of the forecasts are "brilliant" and it appears that the 2013 vintage has lived up to it's promise.