First Grapes of the 2008 Harvest Are Crushed

My first grapes for the season arrived on Thursday. They are Syrah grapes from the Furlong Estates Vineyard in the Alexander Valley. They arrived at the winery at around one in the afternoon and they looked great. Lots of small bunches with a lot of flavor. I expected about 3 tons and ended up with about 2.75 tons. We crushed them straight away into half-ton macro bins and they then went into the cold room for the next 4–5 days. This cold soak helps to extract color from the skins before the fermentation starts. Its been a long week with a lot of driving between vineyards and picking up of barrels. It sure is good to have the first lot of grapes in and now my hands can start to get wine stained again.

Bins of grapes waiting to be crushed

Adding whole bunches to the fermentation bin

Freshly destemmed grapes being pumped into the fermentation bin

This morning I visited St. Mark’s Vineyard and took samples. The weather has cooled down considerably from last week and the morning fog is back. This is good as the ripening process has slowed back down to its normal pace. After checking the sugar content of the samples, Mark, Ginny and I have decided to give the grapes a little bit more hang time. We originally thought we would pick sometime in the next two weeks but if the weather behaves, we will now most likely wait until the first or second week in October. Everything looks great in the vineyard and I’m sure the grapes can handle the longer amount of time on the vines. This will lead to better color and more intense flavors.

Other news is that our 2006 Eight Arms, Stagecoach Vineyard Syrah is now available for sale at a special pre-release price. To learn more and to purchase some of our wine, please click here.