SUTTONS BAY — The warm summer weather is bringing on an early harvest for Shady Lane Cellars in Leelanau County. The wine season usually begins at the end of September, but the extended summer weather has made for early picking.
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For wine lovers there is not much of an impact as most wines take time to produce, but for the ones who harvest, it will allow grape picking to end early.
The harvest season typically ends at the beginning of November - having pickers out in the cold - but now they can look forward to avoiding the late-fall chill.
“It’ll give us the opportunity to be a little more flexible with our harvest schedule. And those reds will those late season reds will be much riper much earlier. So that’s great. Gives us a lot of flexibility and we expect to see some very high quality in those and really all the fruit,” says Andrew Fles, Vineyard Manager, Shady Lane Cellars.
The warm weather has been great for the grapes, but it is becoming dry. Shady Lane Cellars say it has not had an effect on the fruit yet, but they are hoping for some rain.