Terroir 101 | Heat spikes

A different thing from a warm season, so I score it separately.

A region can sit right inside its window all summer and still get taken apart by a fortnight of extremes at the wrong moment. Past about 35°C the vine shuts down to protect itself. Ripening stops, sugar keeps climbing anyway, and the balance the whole season was building comes apart in a few days.

The average tells you what a place is. The spikes tell you what happened to a vintage.