Saturday, February 11, 2012

2011: Post-mortem.

I should make this my last post about Harvest 2011, I really don't want to remember it due to it's coolness and nastiness.
I borrowed this graphic from the front page of today's Napa Valley Register which is reporting that the California Department of Food and Agriculture has just released it's 2011 harvest report. As expected, crop yields were diminished, as compared with the yields from 2010, meaning that Napa's grape crop was only worth a paltry $412,000,000.
One bright spot, however, was that the 2011 Chardonnay crop was the smallest since 1984....yippee! 

4 comments:

Thud said...

5% rise in cab price though at 3 tons an acre would make me smile if we had bought that place up on atlas peak.

About Last Weekend said...

Wow, sounds as though the wine industry will be hurting as much as the snow one!

Do Bianchi said...

really interesting stuff, VG... does the 412 million figure represent the value of the fruit before vinification? I'm assuming so...

can you explain the significance of the Chardonnay data?

Vinogirl said...

Thud: Looks like Cab prices are having a bit of a recovery, but I'm sure, when the County's Agricultural Crop Report for 2011 is released in April, you'll see that Cabernet franc and Petit verdot still command the highest prices per acre.

ALW: Yields were low in 2011, but not dire...most wineries will do just fine.

2B: Yes, before vinification.
Chardonnay is very susceptible to powdery mildew. Seeing as the 2011 weather (high humidity and moderate temperatures) was very conducive to the spread of PM infection, on all grapevine tissue, I think it is safe to assume that Chardonnay growers lost a higher percentage of their crop to the pathogen in 2011.