Silhouettes Against the Sky

     Here are some evening pictures of the vines against the fall sky.  I took them yesterday as I walked among the vines.  From top to bottom, they are Vidal Blanc, Chambourcin, and Chardonnay.  These vines were just beginning to go dormant for the winter when the temperature dropped like a rock.  It made me think of a year back in 1980 when the temperatures fell too quickly for the vines to acclimate.  They were caught with sap still in their trunks when the temperature went down to -28 and people lost 50 - 75% of their vines in one week.  The grape growers still refer to it as the Christmas Massacre of 1980 in New York and I only hope we don't get to see the same thing in our vineyard.

     We are making plans to mulch all the grapes in the next several weeks.  We have saved up all of our organic compost from our grape pressing and mixed that with our horse manure and wood shavings.  The result is a beautiful, rich mixture which promises to protect and nourish these vines throughout the upcoming year.  

Transfering the Reds

  Spent yesterday evening transferring and sampling our Cabernet Franc and Chambourcin from this years (2013) harvest.  I have stated from the day we picked that this vintage is going to be very special because of the late, warm, dry weather we experienced in August, Sept. and Oct.  Well, last nights transferred showed that these predictions are coming true.  The wines all have an incredible body and structure that we have not seen in the past 3 vintages.  Unfortunately we will have to be patient and allow some of the tannins to soften over the next 18-20 months but at this point these reds are looking exceptional. 
   We were also able to transfer the fruit wines which are now in their final stage of maturation and some of the small changes we made in these wines this year and last year are also paying off nicely.  You may, or may not remember that I talked about a change we made in the type of yeast which we used for last year's fruit wines.  We were very happy with the results of that experiment and our increasing sales of these wines shows proof that our customers were happy too.  This year we kept the same yeast but changed our tannins and pectic enzyme to give these wines a little softer feel on the palate.  Initially, these changes seem to have also made a very positive difference.  We expect to release all our new fruit wines in June so we will let you be our final judge. 
    Meanwhile, we will just have to wait and continue to enjoy the fruits of last season's labors.  Sometimes, the waiting is the hardest part!!!

From Start to Ferment

This past weekend, Jeff and Kisa Skelton and all our friends at the winery came together to pick, crush, press and ferment the late harvest Vidal Blanc.  The top picture shows a group shot of our picking crew.  We enjoyed a beautiful day and a whole lot of friends made short work of our 1000 lbs of grapes.  The final press produced 100 + gallons of amazing juice.  Jeff helped crush and press the grapes before we introduced the special Sauternes yeast.  Our juice tastes amazing and if everything works out the way it should, the final wine will taste amazing and should be ready by next September.  I am looking forward to trying this wine as it develops.

Late Harvest Vidal

   Here are pictures from some of the clusters of Late Harvest Vidal Blanc that I picked yesterday evening.  You can see the dark grapes on several of the clusters that have begun to sweeten due to Botritis.  The Noble Rot infects the skin of the grape and allows the skin to give up moisture while it concentrates the sugars.  Unfortunately, the yellow jackets figured all of this out on their own 2 or 3 weeks ago and started drinking the sweet nectar. Thanks to the very cold temperatures the last several nights we are now rid of the yellow jackets and we can begin to concentrate the flavors for our final picking this weekend.  Hopefully all the numbers will be great and we can complete the crush and press of our first Vidal Late Harvest Dessert wine.