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16 WINES&VINES October 2017 WINE INDUSTRY NEWS keep up the pace and we lost them. Fortunately, the guys that had left had issues with their new crew and came back. So it's been a turmoil." She said many of her winery customers wanted to pick at the same time ahead of the heat to preserve acidity. It added to a chaotic week leading up to the heat waves that came during and after the Labor Day holiday. "Things are back to normal, the fruit that was just starting to mature and not really ready weathered the heat all right, and we are now back to a steadier pick." Many winemakers have reported no-show picking crews. Chris Kajani, winemaker and general manager at Bouchaine Vineyards in Carneros, said it happened to her a few times this year but the winery's vineyard contractor, Walsh Vineyards Management, either redi- rected a crew that was already working or sent over other workers who had picked earlier. Strategic planning for picks Rather than simply sampling and selecting a pick date, Kajani said she needs to be more strategic about harvest. For example, she now gives Walsh a 96-hour notice prior to a pick. "We tend to block out days to get on the schedule prior to determin- ing the exact blocks we are picking," she said. "There is some intuition and nuance involved, but we find that gives Walsh a heads up and helps them with their logistics and we don't miss our optimal picking window." Tom Eddy, winemaker and owner of Tom Eddy Winery in Calistoga, Calif., said it's not just a problem with picking crews. Sometimes work- ers for mobile bottling rigs aren't showing up either. He said most of the operators he talked to this summer are asking staffing agencies for two to three times the number of workers they need with the expectation that most won't show. On Sept. 15, Eddy brought in about 7 tons of Cabernet Sauvignon from vineyards in Pritchard Hill and on the valley floor near Cal- istoga. He said he'd been irrigating before the most recent heat spike and the grapes looked OK but he said he's seen several vineyards that because of a lack of water before the hot weather or row orientation had been badly damaged. "A lot of people got hurt during that heat wave," he said. "In my 45 years, I don't ever remember that much heat accumulation that fast." Despite the challenges from the heat, Eddy said yields are generally good, especially after the lower than normal vintage last year. He works with vineyards throughout Napa Valley and in Sonoma County for his wines and those of his clients and said vineyards that were put- ting out about 2.5 tons to the acre last year are back to normal at around 3.5. While the rain and humidity after the heat was weird, Eddy said from what he's seen it does not appear to have caused much rot in Napa Valley Cabernet. He also had just checked on some Chardonnay in the Russian River Val- ley and said those grapes were clean too. "That was just really bizarre," Eddy said of the weather. "We were bottling that week when the rain came on Thursday and we had to shut the line down because the humidity was so high the labels wouldn't stick." He said he hoped that the weirdness and challenges of 2017 were done, and based on the long-range forecast looked forward to a typical California fall to allow the rest of har- vest to proceed unrushed. "From what I'm see- ing of the weather it's going to really cool down and become a normal fall." —Andrew Adams with Jane Firstenfeld and Peter Mitham contributing. "We have never seen a season like this and hope we never see another one like this." —Craig Ledbetter, Vino Farms LLC