Oxley Estate Winery is going to have to harvest some grapes sooner than they expected due to this summer's warm temperatures and frequent rains.
The winery posted to social media that they will have to harvest two to three weeks earlier than usual on the grapes that are used in their Verjus wine.
Verjus is a tart, fresh juice of unripe wine grapes that is non-alcoholic, but the berries are picked before they reach full maturity.
While it's not anticipated that this will have an impact on stocking the shelves, it does make harvesting difficult as they need the grapes to be a certain tenderness.
This issue to have to harvest early is considered an outlier by the winery, as they haven't had to harvest early in a number of years.
Andrew Wilson, Winemaker at Oxley Estate Winery, says he started working with the harvest in 2020 and hasn't seen it this ahead of schedule before.
"When you're growing grapes you're dealing with nature and it'll throw anything and everything at you. This year definitely seems like a bit of an outlier in terms of how warm it's been, and how fast the season started because you're accumulating that heat, everything is running ahead, and things are more mature in the heat right now then we'd normally expect."
He says other wines could be impacted if the heat continues.
"If the temperature takes a dive in the fall, that will really drag out our season even further, so it's hard to say. If everything remains as it is, yes I expect to be picking a lot of things earlier. You never really know what we're going to get thrown at us."
Wilson says based off this year they are already learning how to adapt in the future.
"We think that we might have found some solutions that'll help us navigate all of that a little bit easier. If we see things starting to heat up we can respond and adapt. We use blankets in the winter to keep our more cold susceptible varieties, so might be able to have those varieties that get a little bit hot in the summer time and kind of moderate them a little."
Wilson adds that they have their wines in tank that they've been developing for years, and harvesting early this year won't impact supply.
Oxley is located along Lake Erie at 533 County 50 Road East in Essex County.