Dozens of Mumm Napa employees gathered Wednesday morning to celebrate the start of the 2014 harvest on the winery’s crushpad.
Deliveries, which began arriving at 6 a.m., yielded just shy of 16 tons of pinot noir grapes destined for Mumm’s sparkling wine.
In keeping with tradition, employees uncorked splits of Mumm Napa sparkling wine and joyously sprayed each other with bubbly. Winemaker Ludorvic Dervin also pulled out a saber and with a brandishing flourish, uncorked a bottle of Rose Brut.
“It was a very good year, almost a carbon copy of 2013 in terms of quality and abundance,” Dervin said. “It was a pretty non-eventful year (for weather), and overall it’s looking really, really good.”
This year’s weather has been similar to last year’s, and although California is still in a drought, Dervin said the limited amount of rain came at just the right time — late February and early March — to soak the soil before bud break.
After that, there were no real weather problems — no frost, with a mild spring and early summer allowing for nice canopy growth and a good crop load.
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