Harvest and Growing Season Recap

Blog contributed by Tate Gregory, William Chris Wine Company and current Board Member Texas Wine Growers

As we settle into the (exceedingly warm so far) Fall here in Texas, growers and winemakers are taking a step back to recuperate following another vintage. Yes, there are tasks to do: bottling and topping in the winery, spreading compost and cover crop seed in the vineyard. But this is the time of year we get to get our feet back underneath us and reminisce on the 2024 vintage.

Following our second straight mild winter, bud break started in late February to early March here in the Hill Country for our early budding varieties. An early start to the season will always have growers worried about frost risks that could impact the coming year’s crop. Luckily this year, we avoided any frost damage on our farms in the Hill Country. While we escaped frost, hail is another risk in the springtime here. Several hail storms came through the Pedernales River Basin area underscoring the value and necessity of hail netting on our vineyards. Without it, we might have been looking at a large loss of crop this year. We unroll our hail net following fine pruning to cover and protect our vines and it stays on until the harvest is complete.

Rainfall in 2024 returned to close to our normal levels and even slightly above at some vineyards during the growing season. Both 2022 and 2023 were drought years and our vines gladly accepted the moisture from above here in the Hill Country. While we welcome rain during the growing season, it is imperative that we stay on top of any disease pressure that can impact quality during harvest. Growers must be nimble during this time of the year to prevent diseases like Downy Mildew or Botrytis from taking hold. Temperatures tracked slightly above average during the meat of the 2024 growing season, keeping our progression in line with the early start to the season.

For growers and winemakers, harvest is the Super Bowl. Everything you have worked for all year all comes down to this and you only get one shot a year at it. Schedules get flipped and picks occur during the cooler nighttime so that you can deliver the grapes to the winery in the morning. Harvest began for us in the final week of June out east with Blanc Du Bois grapes. This variety is always the first in the door for us and is a great little kickstart to the harvest season. Quickly following that was our earliest start to the Hill Country harvest that I have had with Viognier from the Llano Uplift region in the door on July 2nd. A rain event in mid-July pushed a lot of our Hill Country red variety picks back about two weeks from when we thought we would see them, coinciding with the beginning of the harvest in the High Plains. This overlap between Hill Country and High Plains fruit coming in made space in the winery a premium and cellar crews worked to get everything in during the crunch. As Hill Country picks wrapped up around mid-August, ripening in the High Plains was at full force. 2024 did provide some curveballs to the normal picking progression of varieties though. Early ripeners like Tempranillo wanted to hang a little longer while late ripeners like Mourvèdre were ready to go earlier than normal. While the length of harvest might have been condensed due to different varieties being ready at the same time, the quality of our wines this year was out of the park. Brad Buckelew from Lost Draw had this to say, “I’m glad it’s over . 2024 was a rather strange harvest in terms of ripening and the general timing of different varieties. But from a quality perspective it was easily one of the best vintages in the last decade, across the state.” 

Our last pick of 2024 was on October 3, about three weeks before 2023 had concluded. That doesn’t mean all of the work is done though. Winemakers still had to finish out fermentations and get the wines into barrel to age until their time comes to shine. Tony Offill of William Chris is highly optimistic about how these wines will turn out to be, “2024 was a great vintage, on par with 2017. Spring to early summer rains helped establish a great crop in most regions. Moderately high temperatures starting during cell division and through harvest contributed to great phenolic ripening while retaining balanced acidity. Expect 2024 wines to be concentrated and focused.”

The end of harvest is always a welcome sight for us. What begins as a bright eyed, bushy tailed start in July, can become a grind in October. The thing that keeps you going is the passion for what you do. Producing a tangible product that brings people together like wine will fuel you on those nights at 3:30AM when you’re on your fourth breakdown on the harvester, or at the winery when you’re unloading the third truck of the day into fermenters and know you’ve got afternoon pump overs coming after that. The ability to take a step back and reflect on another vintage always provides me with a sense of accomplishment and pride. Mother Nature dictates the vast majority of what a vintage will be, but growers and winemakers across the state work tirelessly to add their personal touches on top.