2025 Harvest
Harvest 2025: A Vintage of Elegance in the Sta. Rita Hills
The 2025 growing season is shaping up to be another cool one here in the Sta. Rita Hills, continuing the trend we’ve seen in both 2023 and 2024. Mild conditions during bud initiation in the spring meant fewer clusters than average, with the lowest yields coming from the western side of the appellation. Still, warm weather during flowering and fruit set gave us healthy bunches packed with small berries encouraging balance for growers.
With no major heat spikes to rush things along, Mother Nature has allowed us to pick slowly and methodically, giving each vineyard the chance to reach just the right level of ripeness.
What We’re Seeing in 2025
One of the most striking aspects of this vintage has been how evenly fruit has ripened across the Sta. Rita Hills. Vineyards on opposite ends of the appellation—Rio Vista to the east and Radian to the west have ripened nearly in sync, keeping us on our toes with a fast-paced Chardonnay and Pinot Noir harvest. We think this unusual homogeneity may be thanks to warmer than normal nights and smaller day-to-night temperature swings across the region.
Another defining trait of 2025 is the balance of the fruit itself. Grapes are reaching full physiological ripeness at lower sugar levels and lower pH than we typically see. For the wines, that likely means lower alcohol, brighter acidity, and a structure that will carry them gracefully for years to come. In short, 2025 may be remembered as a vintage that highlights the elegance and delicacy for which Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir is world renowned.
Harvest Highlights
August 29 – Rio Vista Block 2 Pinot Noir
We kicked off harvest with Pinot Noir for rosé from Rio Vista, a block known for its slow sugar accumulation. Picked in the cool of the evening and pressed gently to stainless steel, this wine is already showing the vibrant red-fruit aromatics we love in our rosé.
September 8 – Sanford & Benedict Block 4D Pinot Noir
Our first still Pinot Noir pick came from Sanford & Benedict. Clone 943 gave us tiny clusters and berries, producing deeply colored musts with soft, fine-grained tannins—classic traits of this iconic site.
September 9 & 12 – Rio Vista Block 7A Pinot Noir and Block 18 Chardonnay
Rio Vista Block 7A, planted to clone 667, delivered our largest picks of the year and remains the foundation of our Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir. As the vines mature, quality continues to shine, and we’ve earmarked selecting barrels for a single vineyard bottling once again. A portion of the fruit also underwent whole cluster fermentation, adding lift and structure. On September 12, we also harvested Chardonnay from Block 18, clone 4 grown in sandy soil on the eastern side of the AVA, destined to form the backbone of our Sta. Rita Hills Chardonnay.
September 15 – Fiddlestix Block 6D Pinot Noir
Just down the slope from Sanford & Benedict, our Fiddlestix block came in beautifully. Clone 667 is showing exceptional color and flavor development this year, with ripe seeds and lignified shoots earlier than usual a sign of balanced ripening.
September 16 – Peake Ranch Block 11B Pinot Noir
Our Calera clone from Peake Ranch followed shortly after. These vines, perched on a steep southwest facing slope, enjoy both afternoon sun and cooling Pacific breezes. The fruit shows a vibrant interplay of richness and freshness that we look forward to seeing in the finished wine.
September 18 – Radian Block 41 Pinot Noir
The looming remnants of tropical storm Mario forced a tough call at Radian. We brought in the small crop of clone 667 just before the rain arrived. Early fermentations are already rewarding that decision, with striking ruby color and lifted floral aromatics.
September 24 – Sanford & Benedict Chardonnay Block T4 & Block 4A (3.3 tons)
Thanks to the stellar efforts of the Sanford vineyard crew, our two blocks of Sanford & Benedict vineyard Chardonnay were hand-harvested before early morning rain on the 24th. Our two blocks consist of a steep north-eastern exposure planted to Wente clone and a gentle north-western exposure with old vine clone 4 Chardonnay. Combined and pressed together, the Wente clone gives body, richness, and ripe tropical aromatics while clone 4 gives acidity and subtle yellow apple and bright citrus notes.
September 26 – Rancho la Viña Block 12 Pinot Noir (2.8 tons)
Our penultimate pick of harvest 2025, our clone 115 at the hillside Rancho la Viña vineyard was afforded considerable hang time this year. As is typical, the block’s hallmark acidity remained rock solid as physiological ripeness progressed slowly throughout the cooler-than-average vintage. After the small crop in 2024 the vines rewarded us with generous yields and the elevated fruit quality we’ve come to expect from the vineyard under the guidance of vineyard manager Erik Mallea. The Pinot Noir was carefully sorted before resting for a three-day cold soak preceding fermentation.
October 6 – Radian Block 40 Pinot Noir (1.0 tons) & Radian Block 31 Chardonnay (2.1 tons)
With threats of rain following a short period of warmth, the 2025 harvest season ended on October 6th with the final picks of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from Radian vineyard.
Small yields of high-quality 115 clone Pinot Noir were harvested from the rocky south-facing slope. Fruit remained healthy despite the cool weather and precipitation, largely thanks to the small, open canopies allowing exceptional airflow and sunlight infiltration, a product of the low vigor site and free-draining soils.
To the west of our Pinot Noir, Radian Chardonnay rests on a steep, mid-slope site which looks westward to the Pacific. This windswept parcel took its time to come around with early October warmth nudging tiny, open clusters of Wente clone Chardonnay into optimal ripeness. Following our typical Chardonnay protocol, the Chardonnay was gently whole-bunch pressed with the free-run juice isolated before being put to barrel for fermentation and maturation.
Early takeaways
For winemakers, our goal is to achieve optimal fruit ripeness and health regarding the conditions of the growing year. A cool autumn and several precipitation events made the 2025 vintage one that kept winemakers on their toes. Patience was a key virtue, with cool days, sugars and acids developed slowly making it difficult to estimate ripeness by these traditional measures. Vineyard time spent inspecting fruit and vine health and assessing physiological grape ripeness was paramount to making crucial harvesting decisions. It was not a harvest to fly by instruments.
Physiological ripeness is a ten-dollar word which coldly describes the multitude of compounds which make wine aromatically and texturally interesting and exciting. Development of these ‘secondary metabolites’ while related to sugar and acid development, is not directly associated with it. Further, there is no easy way to measure them in the field. Assessing them is a refinement of experience. In 2025, experience paid dividends in making appropriate picking decisions as we saw that 'physiological’ ripeness of the grapes far more advanced than what brix readings would typically suggest.
Assessing the quality of a vintage is a difficult prospect early in the wine's life. The colors, smells and flavors in the winery suggest ample concentration and complexity reminiscent of the exceptional 2023 and 2024 vintages. Low pH readings suggest a vintage with cellaring potential while lower than typical alcohols suggest wines of elegance and refinement. We will need to wait and see how the wines evolve; we remain bullish on the fruit quality despite Mother Nature giving us a more exciting vintage than we’re used to in the temperate Sta. Rita Hills.
Looking Ahead
Though it’s still early to make predictions, the 2025 vintage is already showing the hallmarks of something special. Lower alcohol levels, vibrant acidity, and finely tuned ripeness point toward wines of elegance, freshness, and longevity. It’s a year that will likely shine for Pinot Noir, capturing the delicacy and nuance that make Sta. Rita Hills wines so distinctive.