A California Winery Blog

Harvest is in full swing at our downtown winery, where we process all of our white wines.  Over the past couple of weeks we have been getting in truck loads of tiny small cluster berries such as sauvignon blanc and orange muscat.  Today we received about 5 tons of Thompson Vineyard Chardonnay and about the same tonnage of Monterey Sauvignon Blanc (Musque Clone). 

We receive fruit by the truckload, which brings it right to our front door, parking right in front of the visitors area of the winery.  The juice immediately gets pressed off of the skins and fermentation begins soon afterwards.  We have gotten the opportunity to taste sauvignon blanc juice through the stages it takes from just grape juice to an active fermentation.  As the wine is fermenting the sugar disappears and it turns into wine as those sugars convert to alcohol.  Each day the juice is a noticeably less sweet. 

Visitors today can taste the chardonnay berries that we have in the tasting room as they sip through current releases of our 2007 white wines that were going through the same process just one year ago.

Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery