Wet And Wild: How Winter Rains Shape The 2023 Vintage

The heavy rains of win­ter brought a mul­ti­tude of ben­e­fits and draw­backs to the vine­yards this year in Paso Rob­les. While the storms replen­ished deplet­ed under­ground aquifers, the rain arrived with such force most farm­ers were scram­bling to stay ahead of ero­sion con­trol, com­post addi­tions, and trac­tor work before things got too soggy.

It was a race to spread organ­ic com­post mate­ri­als and cov­er crop through the Thibido Vine­yard ahead of the rains in order to allow moth­er nature to do her work. When rain­wa­ter pen­e­trates the ground, it helps to blend com­post and organ­ic mat­ter into the soil. The force of the rain push­ing down on the com­post facil­i­tates its incor­po­ra­tion, enrich­ing the soil with vital nutri­ents. Rain can also flush unwant­ed salts in the soil, improv­ing soil pH and over­all health. 

It’s no secret that the steep hills of our Thibido estate vine­yard have pre­sent­ed ero­sion chal­lenges in the past(Upper Left Image). The year we began prep­ping for the vine­yard was the win­ter of 2018 and we spent three months shov­el­ing mud and apol­o­giz­ing to our down­hill neigh­bors for the mud­dy runoff. Plant­i­ng the vine­yard became syn­ony­mous with a pro­gres­sive ero­sion con­trol approach. In 2019 we installed a large pit drain at the low­est cor­ner of the vine­yard (Low­er Left Image), a series of wad­dles along val­leys and vinerows, and I spread bales and bales of hay every year ahead of the win­ter rain to dis­perse the rain­fall and deter heavy ruts and dam­ag­ing erosion.

Win­ter rains con­tribute to the suc­cess of our cov­er crops grown between vine rows. Moth­er nature’s irri­ga­tion assist­ed in a robust cov­er crop of vetch, legumes and oth­er veg­e­ta­tion used to pre­vent soil ero­sion and add organ­ic mat­ter when mowed and fold­ed into the soil of the vineyard.

This win­ter was a game chang­er in the Paso Rob­les AVA, reset­ting our water dials and refresh­ing our vine­yards. So far, this year Moth­er Nature has teed up the per­fect grow­ing sea­son for out­stand­ing wines in the 2023 vin­tage. For atten­tive farm­ers focused on qual­i­ty over quan­ti­ty, this har­vest should pro­duce beau­ti­ful­ly bal­anced, fla­vor­ful fruit result­ing in fan­tas­tic wines. For farm­ers over­hang­ing fruit in hopes of pro­duc­ing a bumper crop, the result­ing wines will be thin and one-dimen­sion­al. Metic­u­lous farm­ing prac­tices, exer­cis­ing con­trol with growth man­age­ment and using what nature pro­vides will guar­an­tee unprece­dent­ed struc­ture and con­cen­trat­ed fruit fla­vors for 2023 vin­tage wines. I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to the har­vest from the Thibido estate vine­yard this fall and how the fruit will deter­mine the wines we produce!