In wine, its all about the grapes, or more appropriately its all about the weather that can either make or break a grape harvest. This year's grape harvest has a lot of variability throughout the world and isn't likely to be called the next "2005" for harvests. But the market for wine seems to growing fast with new services like discount wine delivery adding to the overall demand so its not likely that much wine will go to waste.
The UK has had a fantastic year, with a warm spring, early summer, and now sunshine into September has created a bumper crop. This year looks to be near perfect and there will be some great wines to come out of the vineyards in Devon.
In the US things were more mixed. Cooler temperatures and wet, heavy fog stalled the harvest in Sonoma into late August with some vineyards practicing selective picking during early August. An "average" harvest would be in early August, so these grapes aren't quite the quality. Other known vineyard locations in California such as Napa and Paso Robles have also been affected and have experienced the same late harvest.
One place in the US that has had great harvest is in Texas where conditions were near perfect for a great Gewürztraminer vintage. It is being trumped up by the local media as the "Harvest of the Century" which may be an exaggeration but does tell on the quality and quantity of the crop. I can only hope that a few of these vintages make their way around as discount wines delivered so that we can all have a taste!
Another top notch harvest was had in New York where an early harvest was possible due to a hot summer and appropriate rainfall. The growing New York wine culture will be pleased by the harvest and subsequent vintage wines that come from this year!
An early frost in Wisconsin has struck the state's largest vineyard and dropped the harvest about 15% from last year . A frost before harvest also doesn't bode well for the quality of the grapes, but most of that drop in quality is in the grapes that are thrown out .
All in all the year seems mixed across the board, and you'll have do to a little research on a bottle before you buy it if you want to get the highest quality out of a 2010.
