2026 Harvest Report | By Christian Palmaz

If 2025 was the vintage of patience, 2026 was the vintage in a hurry. Everything from bud break to the last pick arrived weeks ahead of schedule, and the crop that came with it was the lightest this estate has brought in since 2011. And yet the fermenters are telling a very different story than the scale. Early, light and intense. Here is how it happened.

 

A March That Thought It Was June

The year opened dry, as 2025 did: 8.1 inches of first-quarter rain across the estate against the 13.5-inch historical average for Napa Valley (since 1970). The difference was heat. March 2026 was the second-warmest March in our records, behind only 2004. Nine days reached 80°F on the estate average, the 300-foot station touched 92.8°F on March 20th, and the whole month saw a quarter inch of rain.

The vines took the hint. Chardonnay bud break came on March 1st, seventeen days earlier than 2025, and the Muscat was out by the 5th. The reds followed on March 6th, nineteen days ahead of last year, with Grenache on the 9th and the Riesling, our habitual straggler, on the 10th, a full month ahead of its usual April date. Every varietal on the estate had broken within ten days, and only 2020 has seen the reds break this early.

Then April changed its mind: the fifth-coolest and second-wettest April since 1970, 4.8 inches in a month that averages 1.5, with storms on the 10th and 11th and again from the 20th to the 22nd while the new shoots were out and tender. We never saw frost, but cold, wet and windy while the vines are building their clusters is a combination no grower wants.

Where the Fruit Went

Much of it never formed. The clusters that set were loose and the berries stayed small, and when the crew made its usual late-July pass dropping to one cluster per shoot, there was far less to drop. Even so, the scale surprised us: the crop came in at roughly half of what we had penciled in that month. The estate finished about 60 percent lighter than 2025, Cabernet Sauvignon down nearly 70 percent, the whites about 30, the Riesling holding up best. The 1,400-foot vineyard felt it hardest: five of its seven blocks were never picked at all, and block J, our biggest up there, came in at less than half a ton an acre. Across Napa the story was much the same.

 

There may have been a second blow. Our stations sit in a calm spot, and bloom season averaged its usual two to three miles an hour, but on May 17th and 18th a dry north wind came over the ridge: a 36 mph gust at 1,400 feet, the strongest spring gust we have recorded since the stations went in, with single-digit humidity. By the calendar that was the tail of bloom in the lower vineyard and the middle of it at 1,400 feet, and hot, dry, gusty air during flowering is exactly what knocks flowers off and leaves shot berries behind. The only other spring with a wind like that, in May of 2022, also brought in a light crop. I can’t prove it from the scale, but the vineyard that felt the most wind is the one that lost the most fruit.

 

Once April let go, the season itself was almost gentle. April through September ran on the cool side of our 1970-to-present record, nighttime recoveries stayed strong all summer with a June-through-September average low of 51°F, and just one day cracked 100°F on the estate average before the last cluster was in. March made it early, and summer never made it hot. VIGOR saw the same thing from the air: canopies filled a full month ahead of 2024 and 2025, and the light crop kept everything three weeks ahead even as summer refused to hurry.

 

Twenty-Nine Days

Harvest opened on September 4th with the lower-vineyard Chardonnay, twelve days ahead of 2025 and the second-earliest start in our records behind 2020’s August 31st. On September 9th we picked our first Cabernet Sauvignon, block G, the earliest first Cabernet in a dozen years of pick sheets, and it happened to be the hottest day of the year: 101°F on the estate average and 107°F at the 300-foot station. Three days of that, and by the 11th we were back in the 70s. Those are the lots Tina, Mia and Doug will be tasting hardest against their numbers.

From there the lower vineyard came in block by block while the upper vineyards ripened into nearly perfect weather in the 70s and 80s. The first 1,400-foot fruit came down on September 30th, and the Merlot at 1,200 feet closed the books on October 2nd. Twenty-nine days, start to finish, without a drop of rain worth measuring: the earliest finish in our records and eighteen days ahead of last year.

Then, on October 3rd, the day after our last pick, Mother Nature slammed the door: six straight days at 95°F or better, 104.8°F at 300 feet on the first of them. Every cluster was already inside. In 2010 she ended the season with atmospheric rivers. This year she used the oven.

 

Context Among the Vintages

Cabernet hung 210 days from bud break to last pick, a day longer than 2025; Chardonnay went 204 days against 193, and Grenache 183 against 173. The whole calendar shifted forward three weeks and kept its shape. Only one March since 1970 was warmer (2004), only one April wetter (2006), and only 2020 started this early. For the crop, the nearest cousins are 2020 and 2015, two light, concentrated vintages, though I keep thinking about 2011, the last time we brought in this little fruit, for the opposite reason: that was a cold, wet year, and this was anything but.

 

Small Crop, Big Wines

Which brings us to the cellar. Winemaker Doug Mitchell’s read is as honest a summary of 2026 as I can offer: yields are down, but the fruit has fantastic intensity and aromatics, and he is excited about the quality and disappointed only in the quantity. Don’t let marketing know, but there will be noticeably less 2026 to go around. What there is should be something special.

I look forward to revisiting these thoughts in two years, when Tina, Mia and Doug bring this vintage to the blending table. I suspect we will talk about 2026 the way we talk about 2015 and 2020: not much of it, and all of it worth the wait.

Cheers to the smallest crop and the biggest flavors we have seen in a long while!