I don’t think there is any way to get around the fact that there’s a lot working against wineries heading into harvest 2026. Oversupply in the broader market, rising production costs, unpredictable weather patterns, and labor shortages have made pre-harvest planning more critical, and more complicated, than it has been in years. The wineries that […]
Harvest
After the Freeze: How Wineries Can Manage Extreme Crop Loss
Throughout April, most of the Eastern seaboard and parts of the Midwest experienced a series of frost and freeze events that will likely have an impact on the 2026 wine grape supply. The most extreme of these events was through the April 21st morning in which several states experienced record low temperatures for several hours (Vigna […]
Winemaking Success Stories from Vintage 2025
While everyone else is talking about what’s broken in the wine industry, I’m going to show you what’s working. The 2025 vintage brought immediate breakthroughs for DGW Clients who made small strategic shifts. With some winemakers we solved problems they’d been fighting for years, and for others we saved entire crops by making quick-thinking decisions. […]
Inside Vintage 2025: What Every Winemaker Needs to Know
Spoiler: Every Winemaking Operation Can Do These Things The 2025 vintage is shattering assumptions and rewrote the rules – giving some regions a reminder what a good harvest feels like, and other regions struggled under accelerated conditions. While some producers clung to outdated practices (yes, that means you if you still think 65°F counts as […]
From Hope to Despair: Recouping Soured Vintages
It may take one moment – one large rainstorm, a hurricane, a few hours of gusty wind – to complete turn a crop from hopeful to despair. Let’s review a few tactics that have high impact value in saving the wine’s quality from lower quality fruit. For All Ferments: Harvest Actions For any variety, red […]
Maximize Beauty in White Wine Making
Tips for Improving White Winemaking Processes I can tell a lot about the quality of a winery’s wines by tasting three white wines on their tasting menu. Why? While there are some exceptions to this generalization, most white wines are straightforward in whether they taste “good” or “bad.” If a winery has issues selling their […]
