2024 Harvest Report from Silver Thread Vineyard

2024 may go down in history as the warmest growing season ever in the Finger Lakes. Until now, that title has been held by 2012. Word on the street among winemakers across the region is that 2024 grapes had some of the highest sugar levels they had ever seen. In general, everyone is thrilled with the potential of the 2024 wines. We share that optimism here at Silver Thread!

Warm weather is a bit of a double-edged sword though. As winemakers, we love the warm sunny days that ripen the grapes and help develop juicy, ripe flavors. However, warm and humid nights that lead to morning dew are ideal conditions for the spread of fungal pathogens like downy mildew. We keep a very close and careful watch over our vineyard, so we were able to mitigate the fungal disease pressure with our arsenal of organic biopesticides.

Once harvest season rolled around and we got to picking our grapes, we were thrilled to get a good yield! We’ve had two small crop years in a row (2022 and 2023) so it was wonderful to fill up the tanks and even need to purchase some more barrels to fit everything. Our Good Earth Block, planted in 2022, gave us an especially satisfying crop of Regent, Aravelle, and Cayuga that were grown exclusively with organic practices.

Winemaker Paul Brock emptying a hand tote of grapes into the bladder press.

A bunch of organic Aravelle grapes grown at the Silver Thread estate.

We will be releasing 2024 wines throughout the spring, starting with our Dry Rose of Pinot Noir. You can expect lower acidity, which makes the wine a bit fuller bodied and soft, and higher alcohol in some wines (from the higher sugar levels in some of the grapes). Red grapes had well-developed skins, which will mean darker color and more tannin than usual. We’re excited to share them with you!