Laurie Love on Wine: The trials, tribulations and inspiration of 2023 in the vineyard

Welcome to Laurie Love on Wine! I am Laurie Love, a professional wine writer and educator based in Santa Cruz. In this column, I share my wine passion, knowledge, and experience with Lookout readers. Follow me on my wine blog, Laurie Loves Wine, and on Instagram at LaurieLoveOnWine. I love email from readers! Stay in touch: Email me at laurie@lookoutlocal.com. Join me as we journey together through the wonderful world of wine.

WINE NEWS

Reflections on the 2023 year in the vineyard with Ken Swegles

As we turn the calendar to a new year, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect back on our remarkable 2023 vintage in Santa Cruz. The vintage saw one of the longest and coolest growing periods in 30 years, allowing the fruit to develop slowly and to retain a good balance between sugar and acidity. The 2023 wines are now aging in the cellar, and the year in the vineyard might be over, but no one will forget this historic vintage and the wines will be there to keep reminding us of this for years once they are released. Who better to reflect on the 2023 year in the vineyard than Ken Swegles, one of the most respected and hardest-working viticulturists in the Santa Cruz Mountains?

First, some background on Ken Swegles. He is owner of Rhizos Viticulture, along with his wife and partner, Abbey Chrystal, where he provides vineyard consulting services for many of our local vineyards. Swegles is also co-founder and partner at Madson Wines in Santa Cruz, co-owned by founder and winemaker Cole Thomas and Chrystal. Swegles is also vice president of the Viticulture Association of Santa Cruz Mountains (vascm.org). He farms his vineyards exclusively using organic, sustainable and regenerative agriculture practices.

For over 16 years, Swegles has been involved in viticulture and winemaking, mostly in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He started out as a harvest intern at Byington Winery and eventually worked with David Bruce, Ryan Beauregard, Williams Selyem Winery in the Russian River Valley, Jeff Emery at Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard, Rhys Vineyards, Mark Bright of Saison Winery, Coastal Range Vineyards and others, before starting his own viticulture consulting business in 2016. The same year, Madson Wines launched.

For the Madson label, Swegles farms several small, family-owned local vineyards, including Ascona Vineyard, located in the Skyline area of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Ascona sits at about 2,500 feet elevation above the fog line and is owned by David Nagel, a retired Silicon Valley exec who originally saw the unique potential for the site (at elevation with desirable exposure and soils) and planted a vineyard there in 2001. Nagel and Swegles replanted and expanded the site in 2017 with dreams of eventually creating a wine label. “The first time I saw Ascona, observed the vines and the layout, and got down on my knees and scooped up some of the dirt, smelled the conifers on the periphery, felt the prevailing wind, I thought it had all the factors of a Grand Cru site,” said Swegles, referring to the highest-quality designation given to wines from Bordeaux. “It’s something you just kind of feel, the energy is different. And I thought, ‘I want to make wine from here.’”

The vineyard is planted to pinot noir and chardonnay, the two most widely planted varietals in our region, as well as cabernet franc and cabernet sauvignon, but it also includes several other varietals not typically seen in the appellation, such as chenin blanc, gamay, negroamaro, sangiovese, sauvignon blanc and aligoté, the other white grape of Burgundy. Ascona has about an acre of three different clones of aligoté grapes. Swegles feels this grape has huge potential on its own as a wine and as a varietal able to withstand climate change in the vineyard, owing to its ability to naturally retain acidity. In fact, he has planted several other vineyards to aligoté in the region. “I think in some sites, like Ascona, aligoté by itself or as a small blender with chardonnay is amazing,” said Swegles. Aligoté can be naturally higher in acidity than chardonnay. “The Madson 2022 Ascona Chardonnay has 5% aligoté. It adds a nice acidity and a great mineral complexity that I think really complements chardonnay,” he said.

As far as the 2023 growing season, as I reported in the fall, it was an incredibly long, cool and late year for wine grapes. The year started out well, with a cool spring and no frost, then presented many challenges in the vineyard during the long season before finally finishing with fantastic fruit quality. 

To start though, 2023 saw late bud break (when the vines start budding out), as much as three or four weeks later than usual in some Santa Cruz sites. “Once the buds started popping out, the phenology [biological development] was very sluggish because of the clouds and rain,” said Swegles. At this point, vineyard managers often spray stylet oil (an organic product) to help prevent mildew. But the rain also made it challenging to time the sprays. “We try not to spray stylet oil in the rain, so we were waiting and waiting and using things like copper, then tried to get in a couple oil sprays when we could when it got dry enough,” said Swegles. “Long story short, it was a tough year out of the gate.”

In late June/early July, when the buds finally began to develop into tiny flowers, a stage known as flowering, the region saw another significant amount of rain. Strong rain, wind and hail can prevent flowers from pollinating, knock them off of the vine or lead to diseases such as bunch stem necrosis, when stems and eventually berries shrivel during ripening. “Early on I foresaw an extreme pressure for botrytis [rot], so we sprayed some organic products as a prophylaxis to this,” said Swegles. “Luckily we sprayed these products early and were able to save a lot of our grapes because of it.”

Flowering took twice as long as usual: four to six weeks in some areas, where usually it takes two or three, even as little as one week in warmer sites. “It was a very long, drawn-out, cold flowering period, which led to a lot of shatter [when the grape cluster fails to set adequate berries], which leads to very heterogeneous ripening, and very skewed sugars and acids when it comes time to sample,” explained Swegles.

After flowering, fruit set occurs when the grape cluster begins to take shape. “When fruit set came around, it rained again. And we continued to spray against bunch rot and mildew,” said Swegles. To mitigate impacts from tractor use (soil compaction, fuel usage, and so on), he also began experimenting with spraying using a drone instead: “As an organic farmer, we are doing our best to move toward that sustainability model.”

Once the clusters are more mature, they go through versaison, which is when green grape berries ripen and change color: red grapes turn red and white grapes move toward a golden yellow color. Although heat is necessary to help this process complete evenly and completely, in 2023, again the season remained cool, and veraison was not only later than usual, it was longer and more drawn out. “When we finally got to veraison, we thought we might finally get some heat. But it was a false hope. It was another four to six weeks before we started picking,” said Swegles. This brought additional concerns for more disease issues and uneven ripening. Typically, vineyard managers may cut off less-ripe fruit (called “green drops”) to help increase ripening in the remaining clusters. “We did three drops at some vineyards, which is crazy, but did not drop more than 5 to 10% anywhere,” said Swegles. “But then four weeks into veraison, with bird netting up in most sites [to prevent birds from eating the fruit], we thought: Should we drop more fruit? Are we going to be picking in November? And is that OK? Can we let it sit through the rain? It scared me for sure.”

When Swegles and his crew finally were able to begin harvest, they were rewarded for all of their struggles with phenomenal quality fruit, thanks to the choices they made in the vineyard and to the long, cool season. Swegles said, “The flavors of the fruit were incredible. The seeds were ripe, the stems were lignified [ripe],” both factors that are important for wines made using whole clusters as they do at Madson. “I’ve never tasted such good fruit as I did this year. The wines that are coming from it are really inspiring. It’s going to be one of the best vintages, one for the books,” he said.

I asked Swegles if he had any predictions for 2024: “I’m not one for predictions, but what I do predict in 2024 is that we will be learning a lot more, and having a lot of fun doing it. Whatever comes our way, we will embrace it and adapt accordingly.” Words of wisdom for us all.

UPCOMING WINE EVENTS

Each column I highlight some of the wine events happening around our region. If you are a winery or organization that has an upcoming wine event, email me with the details at laurie@lookoutlocal.com.

Zinfandel Advocates & Producers (ZAP) hosts the 33rd annual Zinfandel Experience, aka ZinEx, in San Francisco from Thursday, Jan. 25, to Saturday, Jan. 27, featuring wine dinners, seminars, auctions, and the Grand Tasting. Held at One Market Pavilion (1 Market St., San Francisco), the Grand Tasting event takes place on Saturday, Jan. 27, starting at noon (11 a.m. for VIP ticket holders) and features over 60 zinfandel winemakers pouring their wines in a walk-around tasting. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to the ZinEx website here.

Kissed By An Angel Wines is holding its grand opening event Saturday, Jan. 27, from 3 to 5 p.m., featuring wine flights, live music from two local bands, along with on-site wood-fired pizzas. Tickets ($10) are very limited and are available for advance purchase only.

Until next time!

Cheers, Laurie

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