Hello Davero friends! We’ve just wrapped up the 2025 grape harvest — and what a season it turned out to be.
This year stood out for one clear reason: a dramatically cooler ripening season, far below what we typically see. To get a better idea of how much cooler this year was compared to others, consider July, our hottest month. July temperatures generally reach 10-15 days above 90 degrees, sometimes exceeding 100! This year, we only had two days top 90 degrees. More so, the days above 90 brought less acute heat and cooled off quickly, allowing for cooler days overall, and cooler nights.
The relatively cool year provided consistently “perfect” conditions for mildew, which is the main antagonist in winegrape production. It was a struggle for everyone in our area, because the cool weather kept mildew pressures up for days in a row.
We valiantly pulled our DaVero team together to perform meticulous hands-on tasks in the vineyard to reduce the probability of outbreaks. One of the most important natural measures we use to protect against mildew is ensuring proper airflow through the vineyard and around individual clusters. We do this by removing leaves around the fruit and positioning shoots, so clusters have space between them and don’t hug or grow into each other. We kept our eyes on the vineyard, monitor fruit quality daily. Our vigilance paid off.
Despite the insanely high pressure, we kept mildew issues at bay. We feel blessed that our healthy vines remained healthy and came away unscathed considering the climatic factors we were facing.
So how does all this impact fruit character and quality? The cool weather pattern dramatically slowed fruit ripening, which isn’t a bad thing! The very slow pacing taught us quite a bit about being patient, VERY patient. As winegrowers, our ultimate goal is to pick at peak ripeness. But “peak ripeness” means a couple of different things.
First and foremost, we want the unique flavors of each varietal to fully develop. Secondly, we want the sharper malic acids to fall. Over time, the metabolic breakdown of malic acid reduces acidity to levels which allow for healthy, natural fermentation. This happens slowly in long, cool vintages, and we have more “space” for deciding the best day to pick. During warmer years, finding that sweet spot where flavors balance with proper acidity levels feels like trying to catch a falling knife, because the vines’ entire physiology (rising sugars, falling acids) moves much more quickly!
The cool 2025 season felt like waiting for a banana slug to finish a 5k. We waited and we waited and practiced an insanely high level of patience, constantly going out to the vineyard, tasting and inspecting, waiting for the highest level of quality we could achieve. And we were successful.
As a farm manager, it’s hard to describe that persistent itch in the back of your mind when deciding the right moment to harvest. I firmly believe this vintage is going to create some truly amazing wines, thanks to practicing patience.
Cooler seasons like this don’t come around very often, but I am happy to have spent my first year at DaVero during what I would describe as a very, very good year.
Cheers!
Andrew Beebe
Farm Manager
DaVero Farms & Winery
Andrew Beebe is our Farm Manager, a hands-on, first-generation grape grower who earned his Master’s in Viticulture & Enology and leads our vineyard, farm and garden teams here at DaVero.