Wine Grape Harvest Pt 1
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. Weather challenges over the past year weren't enough to prevent what appears to be a near textbook vintage for Walla Walla Valley wines in 2017.Figgins Family Wine Estates viticulturalist, Jason Magnaghi says everything seems to have fallen perfectly into place ...
MAGNAGHI ... "We're super excited about what we've got in the barrel right now. We think that the '17's are going to be really long-lived wines. They've got really, really nice acid, and good tannin balance, good fruit and a real freshness to them that we don't always see, but that acid this season was great. We didn't have to make hardly any additions in the winery and had really great numbers at harvest. And so, so far so good. We'll wait and see for another 22 months, but we're really excited about the '17's."
Magnaghi says the weather fortunes appear to have impacted the vines pretty evenly across the entire valley ...
MAGNAGHI ... "Yeah, it seems to be kind of the story for us this season. We have really great balanced wines. It's an interesting vintage. We've got a lot lower p-h's in finished wines this year than we've had at least in my recent memory. So, yeah, it seems we saw it from one side of the valley to the other and I think it's just a vintage thing and everyone seems to be really excited about it."
Magnaghi says it doesn't appear that any variety failed to benefited from the 2016/17 weather that went from very wet, to very cold, to a very long, hot summer.
Listen tomorrow for more on how the Walla Walla Valley 2017 vintage came together.