If you are a winemaker, it helps to be an optimist.

After all, like all farmers, your livelihood directly correlates to the whims of Mother Nature. Have a good growing season and the chances are good that your harvest will come out the way you hoped and planned. Have a summer filled with heat spikes or unexpected rain and the opposite will happen. It helps, as Monty Python suggested in the song, to always look at the bright side of life. Fortunately for West Coast winemakers, especially those in the Napa Valley, 2023 has smiled on those optimists.

“2023 predicted to be the Vintage of a Lifetime in Napa Valley,” proclaimed the headline this week in a press release sent out by the Napa Valley Vintners, the trade organization that represents the growers and producers in America’s most famed wine region. If there is anyone more optimistic than winemakers, it is the group that represents them.

Read this excellent article by Kelly J. Hayes at AspenTimes.com.