Today was a rainy day. Our average rainfall is about 18 inches a year and the last few years have been well below that. Winter rains are like a cleanser they leach the salts that build up during the dry years. This year we are fortunate in that already we have had more rain than all of last year.
The photo was taken today from the Picnic area overlooking our Pinot Noir. The vineyard has been pruned and looks very bare but we like the combination of mist, mountains and view. This is how a vineyard looks in the winter.
This Saturday, January 26th we are having an Open House to officially introduce our 2006 SRH Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah — rain or shine it should be a great event.
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We combined both.
The vines close down after harvest. The cold weather allows them to remain dormant during the winter months. Pruning begins once the vines are dormant and continues until February.
The party, a pot-luck dinner, included all those working at the winery, their spouses and their children.
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These photos were taken Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Although the harvest finished more than a week ago we will be pressing grapes for another 2 to 3 weeks. These are wines that are being kept with the skins from 4 to 6 weeks after the end of fermentation. Small lots that winemaker Bruce McGuire thinks will benefit from extended contact.
Winemakers call this extended maceration. The decision to press is by taste. The astringent flavors after fermentation are in the forward part of the mouth — the decision to press is when the astringency softens and is felt at the back of the mouth. Not all wines benefit from extended maceration, those that do, are more complex, darker and richer.
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We maintain two other blogs, both of which are called Out of the Box. Our oldest one is for the Wendy Foster Clothing stores and the purpose is to show the newest fashions as they arrive, thus Out of the Box.
The other is for the Upstairs Home Gallery which is an unusual and eclectic collection for the home. This blog, also called Out of the Box, is of particular interest as the Holiday Season approaches. We carry links on the sidebar but we thought it worthwhile to bring it to your attention.
Both blogs, as is the winery blog, are refreshed constantly.
Our first pressing of the 2007 harvest.
The wine is drained from the fermenter leaving the solids behind. These go into picking boxes and then to the press.
The press has an inflatable bladder which gently expands pressing the grapes against a screen. It acts similar to a basket press, gently pressing down without disturbing or damaging the solids. The press cycles and the increasing pressure is carefully monitored by the winemaker — each variety is treated differently.
This press will hold the solids from our standard 8 ton fermenters but it can also be used for very small lots such as the 1-1/2 ton portable fermenters as seen in the photo below.
Red wine, which ferments on its skin, needs to have its cap, or solids punched down two or three times a day. Punching down pushes the solids, which rise to the top, into the fermenting juice below. Color comes from the skins but that is not the only thing extracted — tanin, flavors and much more – are also part of the receipe.
In our regular Stainless Steel fermenters we use a mechanical punch-down but in these small portable fermenters it is all sweat. These small tanks hold a ton and a half and once filled are placed in our giant cold room to bring the temperature down to 45 degrees and permit cold contact between juice and skin before the start of fermentation.
The worker below, a friend of Winemaker Bruce McGuire, is an MD who frequently drops by and is immediately put to work — a warning to those who intend to ’drop by’. Many of these small lots end up as our vineyard designated wines and are carefully monitored from start to finish. We hope the good doctor, present at the creation, will ’drop by’ for the final evalaluation.
These are images of the pickers early in the morning. They have been picking since 3:00am. The fog has lifted but has not completly rolled back, by 10:00am it should be sunny and warm. This week the weather has been ideal — warm low 80s with a pleasant cooling breeze.
The Pinot Noir harvest is below normal — maybe 25% below — the clusters are small and the grapes are small. Look for dark and intense Pinots this year. We cannot account for the low yields, since other varieties appear normal, but we suspect that an early spring frost might have damaged the vines. The logic here is that Pinot Noir is the first to bud and the other varieties might have still been dormant — even the canopy seems a little sparse with shorter canes than normal.
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