California farmers may have left up to 30 percent of their red wine grapes unharvested in 2024 as the state saw its smallest overall grape crush since 2004, and its smallest red grape crush since 1999.
The annual California Grape Crush report was released Monday by the state Department of Food and Agriculture. There's no way to tease out exactly how many grapes were left on the vine. What is clear is that generally speaking, farmers picked their white grapes, while many red grapes that were uncontracted were left hanging.
"Most of the whites around the state were picked," said Glenn Proctor, partner for grape brokers The Ciatti Company. "At the end of the year, people were picking whites at low prices even though they weren't picking reds. There were more unpicked grapes than we thought. It was surprising to us."
The total wine grape crush was just 2.84 million tons, 22.8 percent less than in 2023. The size of the crop was down all over. Napa Valley red grapes were down 16.5 percent by volume; Napa Valley whites were down 15.5 percent. But don't expect Napa Cab prices to be affected, as the average price per ton for Napa Cabernet was down just 2 percent.
In many regions, the dichotomy between whites and reds being picked was very obvious. Sonoma County has twice as many red grapes planted as white. Its red-grape harvest (combined with Marin County's tiny crop) was down 18.3 percent, while its white harvest was down only 8.8 percent.
The difference was even greater in neighboring Mendocino County, which is best known for Anderson Valley Pinot Noir. Mendocino also has about twice as many red grapes as white; its red grape harvest was down 27 percent while its white grape harvest was actually 2.2 percent higher, one of the few such larger crops in the state.
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