2025 Harvest Report: Brian Carter's 48th Vintage

I am writing this up to my waist in grapes, enjoying my 48th harvest as a professional winemaker.

Harvest 2025 has been a good one. A lot of good fruit, which should translate into very nice wines. Not that things are running entirely without a hitch. We have had a few labor issues and a couple of mechanical problems, but nothing that has slowed the fruit coming in.

The Start

The first day of harvest was September 9th, about the same as past years.

That first day we brought in:

• Tempranillo
• Mourvèdre
• Malbec
• Graciano
• Merlot

All nice and ripe. Well, the Graciano might have been a little too ripe, if I'm being honest, but the rest landed in the window we wanted.

Where We Are Now

Approaching the third week of October, we are 75 percent of the way through. The remaining fruit is from Jim Willard's Solstice vineyard in the central Yakima Valley, including his Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, and Sangiovese. The Sangiovese goes to both the Abracadabra Rosé and our Tuttorosso.

Solstice is a cool site, which is exactly what I want for those varieties, especially Sangiovese. The grape struggles in hot vineyards. It needs the longer hang time that a cool site provides to develop the cherry-and-savory profile we are after for both wines.

In the next couple of days I am heading over the hill to pull what I hope are the final samples of the year. My prediction is we will have all the grapes in before the end of October, which is normal for us.

In the Cellar

While we wait for Solstice, the cellar is full. We are:

• Punching down red fermentations by hand, multiple times a day
• Checking brix on every fermenter to track the sugars
• Consolidating barrel lots as wines finish primary fermentation
• Catching up on the equipment maintenance that always gets deferred during the busiest weeks

The wines taste good. Nice fruit in the whites, and nice fruit and color in the reds. Ripeness is on the riper side overall.

What the 2025s Will Taste Like

My inclination is that the 2025s will drink a little younger than normal. Riper fruit at picking usually translates to softer tannin structure earlier in the wine's life. That does not necessarily mean shorter cellar life: a well-balanced ripe vintage can age beautifully if the acidity is in place. But it does mean the 2025s will be more approachable in their first three to five years than vintages where I picked on the tighter side.

We will know more once primary fermentation finishes and we get to blending in the spring. The early signs are encouraging.

48 Years

The number still feels strange to write. When I started in Washington in 1980, there were 16 wineries in the state. There are now well over a thousand. The industry has changed almost beyond recognition, and yet the work in the cellar this week is largely the same work I was doing in 1980. Pick at the right ripeness. Be gentle with the fruit. Let the fermentation be its own thing. Stay out of the wine's way.

Year-end update to come once Solstice is in and we have a final crush total.

Cheers, Brian