On Halloween night, two dozen men arrived at Stubbs Vineyard in Chileno Valley to harvest the remaining pinot noir grapes under stadium-sized floodlights. From 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., they swarmed through the 11-acre vineyard before shipping this year’s vintage off to Sonoma to put in barrels until spring of 2025, when the wine will be bottled.
This fall’s harvest was the latest in the season in decades, and the largest in years. Since 2020, everything from frost to drought and wildfire has hampered yields for vineyards across California. But this year’s clement weather was conducive to winegrowing, especially in West Marin, where temperatures stayed mild and big rains aided irrigation.
“The last three years have been lousy, and this year was great,” said Mary Stubbs, who planted her first grapes in Chileno Valley in 1992. “I was waiting to see what this kind of rain would do because vines don’t like their roots to sit in water, but it was fine!”
Ms. Stubbs pulled 26 tons of grapes this year—six more than average for her. Since 2018, when weather conditions led to a whopping 50 tons at Stubbs Vineyard, yields have been low. In 2020, wildfires tore through Northern California and smoke suffocated many crops. In 2021, drought and other complications resulted in a disappointing 15 tons, and a late frost in May 2022 left just nine tons for that season.
Other vineyards couldn’t brave the hectic weather, and some West Marin wineries shuttered in the last few years. In 2021, Pey-Marin Vineyards on Marshall-Petaluma Road closed, citing climate change, wildfire and pandemic-induced restaurant shutdowns. That same year, Chileno Valley Vineyard also closed. McEvoy Ranch still makes wine from grapes bought from nearby vineyards, but it has not grown its own grapes in many years, according to sources close to the ranch.
The county’s 2022 Crop and Livestock Report found that Marin’s grape and wine sector experienced notable declines from 2021 to 2022. An 18 percent reduction in planted acres meant a decrease from 188 acres to 153 acres, and harvested acres dropped 5 percent. Production declined by nearly a quarter, falling from 322 tons to 245 tons, and the gross value decreased by 7.5 percent, dropping from $899,000 to $831,000.
Steve Doughty, owner of Point Reyes Vineyards, still grows grapes but stopped making wine in 2015 after 25 years. Though he still sells his remaining bottles, the rising cost of transporting his grapes to Schramsberg Vineyards in Napa is financially impractical for him. This year, he opted to leave his chardonnay grapes on the vines for birds to enjoy.
“I thought of using them for personal wines, but there’s a powdery mildew that comes through and destroys all the grapes, so we just left them all hanging for the birds,” he said.
Vanessa Armijo, the owner of Azaya Vineyards in Chileno Valley, tends to 15 acres of pinot noir grapes by the Marin-Sonoma border. She said the last few years have yielded just 3.5 tons, but this year brought an average yield.
“The weather’s been fantastic,” she said. “It wasn’t freezing, we had enough water, we didn’t have mildew or pests. When it works at Azaya, it’s amazing. The years that it doesn’t work, you literally just have to weather the storm and have the patience to keep caring for it.”
Marin’s terroir—the unique combination of soil, climate, topography and other environmental factors that influence the characteristics of wine—is immensely different from that of Sonoma and Napa, whose wineries have grown from a handful in the late 1800s to over 1,700 thanks to a warmer, drier climate and an established reputation. There are roughly 60,000 acres of vineyards in Sonoma County and 45,000 acres in Napa. Marin has just 200 acres.
Especially in the windswept hills of West Marin, colder weather makes for a smaller yield. An acre of vineyard on the coast will produce up to a ton and a half of grapes, which translates to anywhere from 700 to 1,100 bottles of wine. Over the hill in Novato, and in Sonoma and Napa, an acre yields three to four tons of grapes, depending on the varietal. Varietals are also limited on the coast; grapes like cabernets don’t grow well, and most vineyards stick with pinot noir, chardonnay and Riesling grapes, which thrive in lower temperatures.
The grape-growing calendar follows a distinct pattern in West Marin. Pruning typically occurs in December, January or February, depending on moisture levels. As the days get longer, buds emerge from hibernation in February or March—earlier than in many other regions, thanks to the warmer winter and cool winds.
The grape flower then begins to blossom in June, later than in Sonoma and Napa, but coastal fog can pose a challenge to pollination. As vines gradually run low on water and daylight shortens, the period when grapes turn red and sweeten—known as veraison—unfolds from mid-August to mid-September. This crucial time is followed by the browning of seeds and the thickening of the grape skin.
“Marin can be quite good for that,” said Dan Goldfield, a co-founder of the Sebastopol winery Dutton & Goldfield who buys grapes from Stubbs, Azaya and Devil’s Gulch Ranch in Nicasio. “It’s like roasting marshmallows. You get brown seeds and thick skin before the sugar comes in. It makes for a lot of flavor development without a whole lot of alcohol.”
Harvest normally occurs from mid-September to mid-October, but this year, Mr. Goldfield said, grapes ripened at the end of October and had to be picked quickly, before November rains rolled in.
But not all West Marin’s vineyards had successful crops. At Devil’s Gulch, Mark Pasternak’s 18 acres of pinot noir and chardonnay grapes produced just 8.6 tons. But he said the low yield was not weather-related and that poor pruning by staff last year led to unhealthy and inert vines. Mr. Pasternak’s private quarter-acre of Gewürztraminer grapes, which he prunes himself, produced nearly a ton of grapes—an unusually high yield.
David Mease, the owner of Moonhill Vineyards and Burning Bench Cellars in Nicasio, has had an unfortunate run. After a bear ate a large portion of his crop last year, he installed an electric fence around his two-and-a-half-acre pinot vineyard. Although the fence kept the bears and coyotes out, his yield was a quarter less than in previous years.
Only time will tell the true success of this year’s vintage. In the meantime, winemakers like Mr. Goldfield will study their wines in barrels, where color depth and richness indicate a good vintage.