[Chris Vais]

The 2023 vintage in Sonoma Co. should be among the very best. At UNTI, where I work as their Wine Educator, 2023 started out wet and very cool. Bud break which would normally occur at the end of February did not occur until mid March, nearly three weeks late due to the cold weather. Summer was cool, daytime temps in the high 70's to mid 80's. This resulted in a long hang time for fruit. We didn't start harvest until the 3rd week in September, a full month later than usual. Harvest was finished October 30th.

 

The long hang time allowed the grapes to develop lush flavors. The 2023 wines are just beginning to enter the market place. The first 2023 from UNTI to hit the market is our Grenache, a GSM in the style of a Cote du Rhone. The wine has a lush fruit driven palate and a soft mouth feel. By far the best Grenache produced in the 20 years that UNTI has been making wine. More of our 2023 red wines will be released in the coming months and all benefit from the extended hang time.

 

As it happens, 2025, has also seen a cool spring with a 3 week delay in bud break. We are at the end of August and are 2 to 3 weeks away from the beginning of harvest. It is looking like 25 may be a repeat of 23. 

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[Chris Vais]

Harvest has begun with 9 tons of Grenache Noir for our Bandol Rose. Next week it will be Vermantino and Sangiovese.

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[Chris Vais]

Harvest completed on November 4th. Another late bud break with a cool summer. As in 2023, the long hang time lead to really robust concentrated fruit flavors.

 

We just released our block designate Creekside Syrah. I poured this wine for a French vintner who was tasting California Syrahs. he asked me if the wine was a Cornas. Cornas France is where some of the very best Syrah in the world comes from. I told him that it was produce at Unti, the winery I work at, from the same Syrah clones that are grown in Cornas. He was curious about how we farmed the vines, so I took him on a walk through the vineyard block so he see what we do. The vines are closely spaced, vines are 4 feet apart and the rows 6 feet apart. The vines are also grafted to low vigor root stock. The end result is fruit which a produces structured wines. We did a 20 year vertical tasting of our Syrah a year ago. no bad bottles, all of the older vintages, 15 to 20 years old survived with no flaws, the younger ones still had plenty of fruit on the front of the palate.

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[Rap]

Do you notice a slowdown or decrease in sales?

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[Chris Vais]

There is definitely a slow down in sales, but it doesn't impact UNTI. We are small production, about 8,000 to 9,000 cases per year. We sell 90% of what we product, direct to consumer either out of our tasting room or to our on-line customers who number at last count, 33,000. We sell every bottle we produce. We don't have a wine club, but we offer a wine club type discount on 1/2 case purchases and full case purchases. We ship everywhere except Utah and Mississippi. 

 

Craft Beer, craft cocktails, alcoholic seltzer, and Pakalolo (Hawaiian for MJ) have all made significant inroads into wine's market share. The bigger issue for the California wine industry is over production. There is vast amount of unsold bulk wine awaiting buyers. This wine is what often goes into grocery store wine. The big corporate producers are serious ly hurting. 

 

I drove through one of the Carneros District last week and I noted hundreds of acres of Cabernet left unharvested on the vine. Cabernet is the most widely grown and produced wine grape in California and there just isn't a market for it all. Same holds true for Chardonnay. Both Napa Co. and Sonoma Co. Agricultural Commissions have called for vintners to takes many as 30,000 acres of vineyards out of product and farm something other than wine grapes. Both counties are monocultures for all intents and purposes, so a large scale wine grape crop failure/ fire loss puts a big dent in the counties tax revenues.

 

Small artesian wineries like UNTI are in good shape.

 

Chris

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[ds968]

My godson’s very small winery ( in Santa Barbara ) sales are surging .   They can’t keep up with demand .  “Craft” ( for lack of better terms ) wineries have a very loyal , and a fast growing clientele base , who appreciate the consistent quality produced by small independent wineries as opposed to the larger ones .. 

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[ds968]

A guy on the Maserati forum posted a photo of the gift he just received : 

   

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[Rap]

The usual supply demand issue. Remarkable how business misread markets.

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