Buoyed by a textbook harvest, area grapegrowers and vintners are predicting 2006 will be a banner year for Napa Valley wines.

Although the harvest started a little later than usual, it has proceeded at a leisurely pace, allowing winemakers to bring in fruit at the optimum ripeness.

“Wines were made in the vineyards this year,” declared Karen Cakebread, of Cakebread Cellars, during a press conference conducted by the 275-member Napa Valley Vintners trade organization last week.

“We are in a wonderful, long growing season — magnificent hang time for the development of very complex, concentrated flavors,” said Chateau Montelena winemaker Bo Barrett. “It should be a bitchin’ vintage.”

Coming on the heels of a bumper crop in 2005, the current grape harvest is, for the most part, an average crop load, according to NVV spokesmen. Even with varying microclimates throughout the county, the 2006 crush is, on average, two weeks late and has growers and vintners alike grinning from ear to ear.

“Patience in 2006 is a virtue,” says Michael Weis, winemaker for Groth Vineyards & Winery. “Our classic Indian summer is allowing patient winegrowers to maximize the maturity of their cabernet without developing the monster sugars that plague a warmer year. We will be harvesting two to three weeks later than average but will be able to selectively pick sub-blocks that are ripening at differing rates.”

“It’s been an extraordinary year,” said NVV President Hugh Davies in a recap of the 2006 growing season. “It began with the floods of the New Year and some pretty wild winter weather. And there was a lot of rain — as much as 80 inches on Diamond Mountain, 60 inches in St. Helena and in the mid-40s in Carneros. But the vines were dormant so there was little damage, except for the vineyards affected by floodwater.”

Bud break began in mid-March and the rain finally stopped in mid-April, Davies said, “giving us a fairly clean break between the rainy and summer season.” Flowering started in mid-May and continued into June, he added.

“An unusual extended hot spell in July, which brought numerous consecutive 100-plus degree days, was the only significant event during maturity,” noted Tom Tiburzi, winemaker for the sparkling wine program at Domaine Chandon. “The extreme heat occurred while the berries were green and hard, resulting in a slower maturity rate but no ill effects on grape quality. In fact, the long hang time led to complex flavor development. The resulting base wines from this vintage have vibrant acidity and fruit flavors, making it an ideal vintage for sparkling wine.”

Speaking about the harvest for his family’s Schramsberg operation, Davies said pinot noir yields were up while chardonnay tonnage is slightly less than last year. “Just for comparison, we started our harvest in late August — in 2004 we started picking grapes in late July,” he added. “This year our last chardonnay was harvested in Carneros on Sept. 30.”

This year’s cool growing season proved ideal for sauvignon blanc, too, noted Cakebread. “Yields are average to a little lower than average,” she said. “Acids are good and there is brightness of flavor (in the freshly fermented juice), with flavors of citrus and ripe melon. Grape sugars registered 23.5 to 25 brix. And we’re seeing more growers than ever harvesting at night this year.

“This was a fairly late season for chardonnay,” agreed Stony Hill Vineyard’s Peter McCrea, whose family has been growing chardonnay on the east side of Spring Mountain for 55 years. He said yields are fairly average, which means less tonnage that last year.

“(The freshly fermented wine) smells like pears,” McCrea noted as reporters at the event smelled and tasted the young wine. “We expect bigger, more flavorful wines this year, wines with long aging (potential).”

The cool growing season makes 2006 “an excellent year for pinot noir in the Napa Valley,” declared Beaulieu Vineyard winemaker Joel Aiken. He said crop level on average is about 10 percent heavier than anticipated.

“Most of the pinot noir in Napa Valley is planted in Carneros now,” added Aiken. “It’s the coolest region, so pinot gets the longest hang time there. In cool years, pinot is best and it ripens very quickly. Most of it was picked the last two weeks of September and the first week of October. The perfumy raspberry aromas from this harvest indicate we’re going to have some outstanding pinots.”

Had cabernet franc vines in the valley been left on their own, there would have been a huge grape crop this year, noted Tracey Skupny, partner in Lang & Reed Wine Company. “We thinned the clusters three times this year but the yield is only down an average of 5 to 10 percent.

“It was a grower’s year,” she said. “We left the cover crop (in the vineyards) later this year because it helped dry up the moisture from the spring rain. There was much less leaf removal but we irrigated more this year.”

Of the 44,000 acres of grapevines planted in Napa County, only 1,150 are planted to cabernet franc, a grape often used to blend with cabernet sauvignon. Lang & Reed is one of the few cabernet franc producers in the county.

The cabernet sauvignon harvest is only about half complete, noted Cyril Chappellet, of Pritchard Hill’s Chappellet Vineyards. Cabernet sauvignon plantings in the valley total about 19,000 acres, or 40 percent of the total grape crop.

“The cool weather and pleasant days are giving us richness of fruit and more flavor,” he said. “This nice weather is allowing us to pick and choose what we bring in. We’ll also have more moderate alcohol levels in these wines because the sugar levels are not getting higher (with the extended hang time). I think we’ll have a lot more blending choices this year.” Overall, the cabernet yield is up by 10 percent, he added.

“I think the lateness of the season is allowing the vineyards to give us more  uniformity in ripe fruit flavors,” advised Dirk Hampson, director of winemaking for Far Niente, whose cabernet harvest began last Friday.

“Overall, the crop is average in size, and because of the long growing season and long hang time, the flavors are phenomenal,” stated Madonna Estate’s Taylor Bartolucci. “The current warm weather is a blessing, kicking this second stage of harvest into high gear.”

“Interestingly, the brix (sugar) levels for the 2006 vintage are the same as in 2005, but the acidity levels are a lot higher this year than last year,” noted Pierre Birebent, winemaker at Signorello Vineyards.

“In the Chiles Valley District this year, things are a little slow due to the generally cool weather,” advised Volker Eisele, owner of Volker Eisele Family Estate. “The warming trend last week will be very helpful as we complete the cabernet and zinfandel harvest.”

Laura Zahtila, president of Calistoga’s Zahtila Vineyards, pointed out the zinfandel harvest is larger than in 2005 “and even better quality.”

Most cabernet growers feel the harvest will be wrapped up the first week of November. Should the weather change and a big storm be preddicted, growers will work quickly to bring in all remaining fruit, Chappellet concluded.