After a long, often frustrating growing season, winegrape harvest delivers a very promising vintage.

Parsonage Winery had a good year in 2019. Owner Bill Parsons says the 2023 vintage will be even better. The team at J.Lohr draws parallels to the stellar 1989 vintage. Meanwhile Russell Joyce, who planted a vineyard for what would become his Joyce label in 1986, cannot find a point of comparison.

“I haven’t been alive long enough to see a vintage this good,” he says.

The 2023 winegrape growing season was frustrating. With heavy winter rains and a generally cool summer, some vines were subject to mildew. Denis Hoey at Odonata fought a losing battle to mildew in one plot and consigned his Viognier to sparkling wine. Rustique’s vineyards were swarmed by yellowjackets, forcing Chad Silacci to toss 20 percent of his fruit.

Because of moderate weather, grapes ripened slowly, pushing the start of harvest back several weeks. “In September we were all kicking rocks,” Hoey says. And then suddenly temperatures climbed and grapes responded, causing a manic harvest in which many growers scrambled to bring in almost their entire crop in a two week span. Some picked Pinot Noir – usually an early-ripening grape – at the same time as the notorious laggard, Cabernet Sauvignon.

“It was a challenging year – most challenging on the farming side,” Silacci observes. “I just wanted the grapes to come off the vineyard.”

Yet after all the patience and frustration, there is consensus that Monterey County’s 2023 vintage will likely rank as one of the finest.

“It’s the vintage of my career,” says Steve Peck, vice president of winemaking for J.Lohr, citing red grapes showing rich pigmentation and whites normally destined for the brand’s inexpensive labels now matching the quality of their higher-end line.

Despite the extended growing season and late harvest – Peck jokes that he considered renaming a grape clone they call October Night, as November seemed more appropriate this year – the J.Lohr winemaker points to positives: “No fires, no rain too early, no cold days, no frost.”

Conditions allowed for a longer hang time on the vines, so grapes mature more slowly and develop greater character. There were no untimely heat spikes or rains to cause sudden ripening turns. So harvest became a waiting game. “Acidity wasn’t changing, sugars weren’t changing, but the quality was,” Silacci notes.

Even the juice Hoey culled from his “mildew haven” vineyard is promising. “It’s tasting really good,” he says. “I’m really excited about it.”

In addition to high quality, many vineyards report yield levels at or above normal season – welcome results after a drought-stricken year. The 2022 harvest was valued at $174 million, a drop of 20 percent from the previous year. And recent harvests have been a bit of a roller coaster for growers.

Parsons lost almost all of his fruit to the parched summer of 2022. Smoke taint had damaged his crop in 2020.

“Maybe there is a god and maybe he likes me,” he says with a laugh. “This is our comeback year.”