Big, juicy and plentiful: A look at the 2021 wine grape harvest in Upstate New York (photos)

Remember this past summer, when it seemed to rain every day?

A reminder can be found now in the vineyards of the Finger Lakes and other Upstate New York wine regions, where a warm and wet summer has led to a grape harvest that is full of big, juicy berries.

And there’s lots of it.

That represents a change from recent years in the Finger Lakes. The size of the grape harvest, which vineyard and winery insiders call the “yield,” is up for the first time in several years.

“I think were seeing an increase of maybe 20 or 30 percent in yield,” said Dave Pittard, who, with his wife Melissa, owns the Buttonwood Grove Winery and Six Eighty Cellars along Route 89 on the west shore of Cayuga Lake. “It’s making for a busy harvest season. And we’re not done yet.”

“I call this a recovery year,” said Tina Hazlitt of Sawmill Creek Vineyards, a grape grower on the east shore of Seneca Lake. Yields have been down for the past few years since damaging floods hit the region in 2017, she said.

“So we had floods that led to low yields, and this year we recovered — but with lots of rain,” Hazlitt said. “That’s the life of a grape grower. My motto is ‘We’re just trying to keep our heads above water this season.’ "

One reason for larger yields this year is that there was little frost damage to the the vines in the winter and spring this year, said Tim Martinson, a Cornell University senior extension associate who specializes in vineyard research and education. He also coordinates Veraison to Harvest, a weekly report on the status of the New York state grape harvest (veraison in the term used for the late summer period when grapes change color to signal they’re beginning to ripen).

But the summer rain contributed to the bigger size of many grapes, which vineyard insiders often refer to as “berries” or “fruit,” he said.

“There was ample moisture this year that resulted in berry sizes that were a little bigger on average,” Martinson said. “That especially true for the Concords, Catawbas and Niagaras,” he said, referring to the region’s native grapes. “Those were enormous.”

Still, Hazlitt calls this years reds “gorgeous,” while the whites turned out to be what she called “variable,” (some good and some not so good.)

On the red side, she pointed to a grape variety called Syrah, originally native to France but now planted around the world.

“The Syrah we just picked is spectacular,” Hazlitt said. Her vineyard sent half the Syrah crop to the nearby Hector Wine Company, run by her son, and half to the Billsboro Winery near Geneva. “We delivered them to Billsboro and Vinny (Aliperti, Billsboro owner and winemaker) was just grinning when he saw them.”

Unlike winegrowers, winemakers tend not to worry so much about volume or size — they focus on the sugar content and acid levels they use to make the wines they desire.

“A winemaker should never say it’s a bad vintage,” said Ian Barry, winemaker at Six Eighty Cellars, which was called Toro Run Winery before the Pittards bought it in 2020. “You take what you have and make what you can with it.”

That’s why winery owner Dave Pittard dismisses the “old saying” that high yields make for poor quality.

“We can make pretty good wine even when we have a lot of grapes to work with,” he said. “If we do it right, it just means more good wine.”

The Finger Lakes, meanwhile, continues to win rave reviews from wine critics, such as in a recent piece by noted wine expert James Suckling.

“On a crisp late summer day in New York’s Finger Lakes wine region, you’re struck more than anything by light: bright, renewing and sublime,” wrote Suckling, a former editor at Wine Spectator. “It’s all the more beautiful refracted through the prism of the local wines. Whether pale yellow rieslings, bright deep pink, cold-soaked cabernet franc rosés, or a wide spectrum of lighter purple and ruby-colored vinifera wines, they shout ‘life’ when we need most to hear that – and increasingly offer the consumer super quality and value.”

Don Cazentre writes about craft beer, wine, spirits and beverages for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook.

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