What This Summer's Heat Means for This Year's Wine
"This vintage is going to be a long one: we are facing some areas, like Sonoma and Lake County, that are 2 weeks earlier than usual, while Mendocino County is 1 week behind last year." — David Lecomte, Chief Winemaker, City Winery
Every vintage has a personality. Some years are patient. Some years, like this one, move fast and ask the whole team to move with them.
A Season Running Ahead of Itself
An unseasonably warm winter and spring set this year's pace early, and the growing season never really slowed down. Without much rainfall to fall back on, yields are coming in lighter and smaller than average, which sounds like a downside until you understand what it actually does to the fruit. Smaller clusters ripen faster. Faster ripening means an earlier harvest, sometimes by one to two full weeks. Some growers in California's Central Valley were already out picking at the start of August, weeks before a typical harvest would begin.
Heat on its own isn't the enemy here. Grapevines are genuinely happy between 75 and 90 degrees. It's the days that push past 100 that change the equation. At that point, the vine goes into a kind of self-protective mode, closing its stomata to hold onto water, which brings photosynthesis to a complete stop. Sugar keeps accumulating while natural acids like malic and tartaric acid fall away, and the berries themselves can dehydrate, sunburn, or shrivel. The net effect is a grape carrying more potential alcohol and less of the freshness that gives a wine its lift.
How a Vineyard Fights Back
None of this catches a good vineyard team off guard. Irrigation keeps the vines hydrated enough to keep maturing on schedule. Canopy management provides shade through the hottest stretch of the afternoon. Some growers are even shifting to alternative trellising systems, like the lyre method, which opens up more natural shade around the fruit. And in the cellar, the response is the same instinct in a different form: watch the acidity closely, and when the numbers say it's time, pick early rather than let the fruit tip into overripe.
Vines are resilient plants capable of adapting to a rough environment. Grapevines were originally planted in soil too poor for wheat or corn, ground where little else would take, which is exactly why the plant is so resilient. Left alone, a vine can send roots ten to fifteen feet down in search of water, a trait that active soil management encourages far more effectively than herbicides ever could. It's a reminder that vines were built for exactly this kind of year long before anyone was tracking degree days on a spreadsheet.
Why Region Matters More Than Variety This Year
Given how differently this heat is landing from one place to the next, City Winery's advantage this vintage isn't a single grape doing well. It's geography. City Winery sources from six states, and 2026 is a good illustration of why that matters. Mendocino County is having what David calls a genuinely normal year, while Napa and Sonoma are running two to three weeks ahead. Same heat wave, same general region, two very different stories, because microclimate ends up shaping a vintage more than variety alone ever could.
What to Expect in the Glass
The upside of a warm year, when it's handled well, is concentration. Reds are shaping up to be deeply colored and full of flavor, the kind of vintage that rewards a winemaker who protects natural acidity along the way rather than chasing sugar for its own sake. On the red side, that often means adjusting maceration, the process of letting skins, seeds, and stems sit with the fermenting juice to pull out tannin, color, and aroma. It's not unlike reducing a sauce: the goal is concentration without scorching. White grapes are the ones that need the earlier pick this year, since acidity is everything for a white and it's the first thing a hot season takes away.
A Quick Look Inside the Crush Pad
If you've never thought about what actually happens once the grapes arrive, it's worth a peek behind the curtain. Two to three weeks before harvest, the team tests and cleans the entire crush line, top to bottom. Tanks get freed up by bottling out whatever is ready, since every bit of space matters once maceration season starts. From there, wine gets crushed and fermented in stainless steel, oak barrels, or concrete, depending on what that particular wine needs.
White winemaking moves fast. Grapes are picked whole cluster, sometimes overnight to keep them cold, and pressed using a membrane press for a cleaner juice. That juice comes out cloudy, so it's chilled to 40 degrees almost immediately, which lets the sediment settle out naturally before fermentation, typically between 50 and 70 degrees.
Red winemaking is a slower, more hands-on process. Without maceration, red grapes make rosé instead of red wine. With it, the skins stay in contact with the juice as it ferments, extracting the tannin, color, and aroma that give a red wine its structure. Smaller tanks get manual punch downs. Larger tanks get pumped over. Either way, fermentation runs warmer, between 70 and 85 degrees, closer to a simmer than a boil.
The Takeaway for This Vintage
A hot, dry year like this one tends to produce smaller yields and more concentrated wine, provided the acidity gets protected along the way. That's the balancing act every hot vintage asks of a winemaker, and it's the reason City Winery keeps such a close eye on picking windows this time of year. As David puts it, the fruit will tell you when it's ready. The job is just to be paying attention when it does.
If you're curious to taste how this season's decisions actually show up in the glass, our tasting room and wine club are the place to start, and it's a conversation our wine team is always happy to keep going in person.