Field Report: The Chardonnay Harvest, September 2026.

The 2026 Chardonnay harvest is in. Three vineyards, from Clarksburg up to Mendocino, and every grape is now off the vine and in the cellar.

Rob’s read on it:

I would take this harvest every year for the rest of my life.

Three picks, September 2 to 11.

When to call the Chardonnay harvest

Sugar arrives on one schedule and flavor on another, and every day the fruit hangs is a bet against the weather. In August, Rob chose to wait for the flavor. The bet paid. The grapes got ripe and the acid stayed high, and that’s the whole balance a winemaker waits for.

Reamer Farms, Clarksburg

How the Chardonnay harvest works

Crews work the rows after dark, under lights mounted on the tractors. Cold fruit holds its aromatics and arrives in better shape, which is why so much of California’s harvest happens at night. It matters most for white grapes, which go straight to the press.

The press is waiting at the end of the block. Integrity Wine Co., our harvest partners for four years, bring it to the vineyard: a receiving hopper, a press and a line of tankers, parked at the end of the rows.

Reamer Farms, Clarksburg

Full bins and gondolas ride out of the rows and tip straight into the hopper, and an auger feeds the fruit into the press.

Reamer Farms, Clarksburg

White wine starts here. The juice comes off the skins before fermentation, and that’s the big difference from red wine, which ferments on its skins. From the vine to the press is a matter of minutes. Pressing starts in the middle of the night, and the juice runs into tankers as it comes off. By morning, it’s at the winery.

Ruddick Ranch, Mendocino

In the cellar now

The whites are midway through primary fermentation or near the end of it, the stage where yeast turns sugar into alcohol. Rob is checking sugars every day and adjusting the temperature in the barrel room and the tanks to keep the ferments moving slowly. A slow, cool fermentation keeps the fruit’s aromatics in the wine.

The Carneros Chardonnay from Green Acres and Home Ranch at Sangiacomo stays in barrel until June or July 2027.

In bottle now

The 2024 Carneros Chardonnay was picked two harvests ago. Barrel-fermented. 93 points, Tasting Panel.

In the vineyard, the work happens in a night. In the cellar, it takes just a bit longer than that.

Next month: the cellar.

Photography by Integrity Wine Co.