I am tempted to concur on off-the-wall ripening this year, but ultimately, I still don't think we've been harvesting long enough to have the best bead on when we should be harvesting many of our varieties. Earlier in the year, it seemed like everything was trending earlier and we were harvesting summer varieties a week or so earlier than usual. Then by the end of the season it seemed like some of our latest varieties were just not ripening at their usual time (Blacktwig is the big one that stuck out to me, not nearly ripe when it historically has been). But there are still so many varieties that we have yet to pinpoint an average ripening time on (we either miss them because we're caught up with other varieties and they all drop, or they're Northern varieties that ripen way early in the Southeast and we have to watch/sample them very closely to determine when ripeness peaks since the visual cues may be very different from how they look when ripe up North).
Historically, we actually picked much of our orchard prematurely on purpose, hoping to save the fruit from loss to the fungal rots we perennially struggle with. Now that we're achieving some success in fruit rot control, and this year playing around with Japanese apple bags that apparently act to normalize ripening in some of our varieties that we were picking much earlier, it's sort of like going back to square one, as far as what is actually normal for us.
All that said, a month ago I visited a winery an hour southwest of us to pick up some equipment, and I ended up talking extensively to the winemaker -- they were in the midst of harvest, and he mentioned that they were having a lot of trouble with the grapes ripening properly this season. They were actually having to take measures post-pressing to account for the underripeness (I think they added green wood to the mash, if I'm remembering correctly). So for what it's worth . . .
Kordick Family FarmWestfield, NC
Zone 7a