Vintage 2024 versus the past, looking back to look forward.
Each additional vintage at Vinya Vella brings us the good fortune to observe and learn, our process of keeping the winemaking as consistent allows the seasonal influence to be clear in the wine.
As a single vineyard wine produced from a small block with no second label or options for blending vintage variation is part of the process, and hopefully charm. Through the implementation of attentive viticulture, we can work with the season as much as possible. On release of the 2024 Grenache I looked back at one of the tools I use for managing these old vines, the results were surprising, even to me.
This table below presents the days from veraison or first sign of colour change in the grapes to harvest. The 2024 season has had the most rapid ripening of recent years with only 29 days, warm clear and sunny days with a light crop load to ripen. Compare that to vintage 2023 which took 43 days to ripen, cooler and cloudy days with a more generous crop. So, what does all that mean?
Table 1. Vintage statistics for Vinya Vella Old Bush Vine Grenache
|
|
Vintage 2022 |
Vintage 2023 |
Vintage 2024 |
Vintage 2025 |
|
Harvest begin date |
14-Mar |
17-Mar |
5-Mar |
28-Feb |
|
Veraison begin date |
30-Jan |
2-Feb |
4-Feb |
24-Jan |
|
Approx. days veraison to harvest |
38 |
43 |
29 |
35 |
|
Solar radiation accumulation (wh/m2) |
50707 |
52106 |
49797 |
48391 |
Watts as an indicator of maturity?
The bottom line of the table above is a measure of watt hours per m2 (wh/m2), this is the solar radiation value accumulated since budburst. Being a viticulture consultant means that I am often deep in the data when it comes to client’s vineyards and of course my own. One metric I commonly use is solar radiation, this is a measure of how much solar energy has made it to the ground that can then be used by the leaves, remembering that leaves are really biological solar panels.
When trying to pick with fruit freshness in mind, ripe flavours and firm acid are foremost. It is not interesting to me to hang fruit for a long time to have jammy cooked or dark fruit flavours, Interesting to note is that looking at watts after harvest can help to explain the vintage.
Picking decisions don’t come down to a numerical value, more flavour and feel and lots of observations, but reflecting back it has aligned with one. By pure chance all 4 vintages I have made were harvested very close to 50,000 wh/m2 accumulation. The 2024 vintage was harvested only 29 days after veraison, but in that time the sunny conditions still got the fruit to close to 50,000wh/m2 radiation accumulation for the season, so, early picking can still have ripe flavours. There is nothing worse than picking early and having the flavour intensity dialled back, or a thin and skeletal wine. This is usually due to the plant not advancing the maturity enough into the fruit at the time of harvest, from early picking in general or overcropping holding fruit maturity back.
The interesting part is that even without reading this data during the season, there appears to be a trend that independent of budburst date or any fixed calendar date the fruit is seen to have freshness and maturity always around that 48,000-50,000wh/m2 of radiation accumulation. See for yourself how this impacts the fruit driven style of Vinya Vella and our old vines.
What are watts?
When discussion radiation as a diver of plant growth there are two numbers to consider.
1. The potential incoming radiation, this is the total potential that leaves the sun and makes it to the earth, this is influenced by topography, latitude and is relatively fixed.
2. The irradiation values are what has actually made it through the atmosphere, past the clouds and hits the ground irradiating the surface, or in our case leaves.
These simple diagrams below show the global view of angle of interception as it relates to latitude and season. The second diagram shows the effect that the slope or orientation can also have.
So how does radiation affect vine growth? In seasons with a lot of cloud cover temperature can be favourable for growth but the light to drive important processes may be limiting. Take the recent 2023 vintage, it was not particularly cool, but the persistent cloud cover slowed vine development and many growers experienced stalled maturity or a very slow end to the season. This was partly predictable due to the high crop loads but also the fact the orange line (above) was tracking well down compared to other seasons. This means that less solar energy was available for growing and getting all that fruit to maturity.
Figure 1. Solar radiation accumulation from budburst to harvest with the critical 48,000 wh/m2 line marked in red.
At Vinya Vella and my clients vineyards I recognised this and took steps to remove a lot of fruit, also to open the bunch zones to get light into the bunches very early, even near flowering. This had the effect of reducing the load on the vines and creating some more balance between the vegetative growth and the reproductive fruit production. This allowed us to ripen grenache with no problems in a season that saw many struggle with maturity.
Again looking at the 2024 season the dark green line we can see an early increase in radiation, then a sustained consistent trend toward maturity, flavour and aroma compounds were already in the fruit and a short warm sugar accumulation period was all that was needed to finish off the ripening process.
The latest release from our own vines is another step into understanding and farming these old vines. Working in viticulture for over 25 years it seems like the swings of season-to-season variability are increasing. Each year we don’t know what to expect but we plan for the vines to grow, and they do, mostly if not frosted or severely drought stressed. We watch very closely the season and react if required, we have the good fortune of a lot of data to utilise during the season to guide decisions and then after the season to validate or elucidate the nuance of each year.
Thanks for following along and who knows what vintage 2026 will bring!
Cheers
Dylan
