Harvest Update: It's Almost Syrah Time on Red Mountain
Every year around this time, we start watching the phone a little more closely, waiting on lab numbers from our growers out on Red Mountain. This year, that wait is ending earlier than usual. 2026 is shaping up to be one of the earliest vintages we've seen in a while, and our Syrah is close to coming in.
An early year, start to finish
This season has been tracking noticeably ahead of last year's pace from the start, and that early trajectory has held all season. Warmer conditions and an accelerated ripening curve have pushed our whole harvest timeline up, which means decisions we would normally be making in late September are happening right now, in early September instead.
Where the Syrah stands
Our contracted Syrah comes from two blocks, and they are not ripening in lockstep. One block is reading nearly ideal numbers already, with sugar, acidity, and pH all landing in a place our winemaking team is happy with. The other is close behind, still needing a few more days to build sugar even though its acidity numbers already look great. This is a completely normal part of harvest. Different blocks, even within the same vineyard, ripen on their own timeline depending on sun exposure, soil, and microclimate.
Rather than picking everything at once, our approach is to let each block tell us when it is ready, then coordinate a pick that fits both the fruit and the realities of scheduling a truck, a processing slot at the winery, and a picking crew all at the same time. It is less like flipping a switch and more like a small, moving negotiation that plays out over a matter of days.
Why we don't rush it
It would be easy to just pick everything the moment sugar levels look good enough. We don't, because acidity is much harder to get back once it starts to slip, while sugar is comparatively easy to manage. If a block needs a few more days to fully come together, we would rather wait and get a wine with real structure than rush it and end up with something that tastes fine today but falls flat a year from now in the bottle.
What this means for you
Once the Syrah comes in, it heads straight into fermentation, and from there the real transformation begins, the same process we walked through in our Harvest to Bottle post a few weeks back. We will keep sharing updates as picks happen throughout the fall, since harvest is genuinely one of our favorite stretches of the year to talk about.
Following along with harvest this year? Stop by the tasting room, we are always happy to talk through what's happening out on Red Mountain right now.
