The Home Stretch

Fall Colors at Stagecoach Vineyards

When crush started in the first week of September this year, I honestly thought it would all be over by early October. But there really is no way to predict how harvest will go. Furlong Estates Vineyard ended up being picked in two separate lots, 2 weeks apart. St. Mark’s Vineyard was picked in early October and as for Stagecoach — well, the grapes are still hanging on the vines. The leaves are all changing color, the nights are getting cooler and the grapes are just finishing up their ripening. My block of Syrah happens to be in one of the cooler spots of the vineyard and the grapes always like to take there time to ripen. This is the third year I've harvested grapes from Stagecoach and I am finally starting to see a pattern. Sugar levels in the grapes tends to rise fairly quickly in early September and then stop for a few weeks. The grapes seem to just hang out there picking up flavors but not getting any sweeter. Finally something changes around mid-October and the vines kick into gear again and the sugar begins to rise.

The Grapes Are Almost Ready

So, here we are, the last week in October and I am finally picking Stagecoach on Wednesday. I delivered the picking bins yesterday and it was another glorious day up there. I know most people say size doesn’t matter, but when I see the size of the rocks that have come out of the ground to make way for the grape vines, it is a truly impressive site. There are piles of very large boulders scattered around the edge of the vineyard as a reminder to what the ground is like up there. The one I am standing next to is probably one of the biggest, and it sure is impressive. When I walk the vineyard, I always have to watch out for large rocks that litter the ground. With so little soil, the grapes really have to struggle to produce their fruit. But this leads to some wonderfully flavored grapes and incredible wine.

Size matters??

The grapes will be harvested early in the morning. It usually takes about 45 minutes to pick the block (compared to the 3 hours it took us to pick the same amount from St. Mark’s Vineyard). Below is a video from last years harvest showing how quickly the crew works. Please note, that I have not sped up the video!

It’s Nice To Have Help

As a one-person operation, I sometimes need some extra arms (like eight of them) to get everything done. So it’s nice to be in a winery where there are other people around to help out especially on the days when I am crushing grapes or pressing wine. However on Monday I was lucky enough to get some help from my winemaking assistant – Oscar. Oscar had the day off from school, so he came with me to the winery where he was able to help me with the punch downs. Here he is punching down the St. Mark's Vineyard Syrah that we picked on the 4th (see previous post).

He then helped me sample the fermenting must so that we could check on the sugars and see how the fermentations where doing.

Finally, it was nice to have his help when I performed a sensory evaluation of the fermenting wine.

Please note, Oscar didn’t actually taste the wine, but he did smell it. And, his verdict? “Dad it smells like raspberries. I think you should bottled it already!” Well, maybe not so soon – it still has to finish it’s fermentation and barrel age for quite some time before it’s bottled, but at least it has Oscar’s seal of approval!

Harvest At St. Mark's Vineyard

This has been a weekend full of new experiences. On Friday I rented a 16-foot long flatbed truck and drove it to the winery to collect some picking bins. This is the first time I’ve driven such a big truck and it was actually pretty easy to drive. I drove it home and parked it in front of our house for the night (Oscar was very excited to see it and to explore the inside of the cab). At 6:30 Saturday morning, my friend Steve came over and we drove the truck up to St. Marks Vineyard in the Russian River Valley to harvest the grapes. Mark and Ginny Weston, invite their friends and family over to help with the harvest. It had rained the night before so the vineyard was a little wet, but by the time we started picking at around 8:30, the sun was starting to peek out from behind all the clouds. With buckets and clipping shears in hand, we entered the vineyard and starting harvesting. It was a fun time and seemed to go pretty quickly. I have never actually harvested grapes before and it was nice to be involved in the process knowing that he grapes I was picking will soon become Eight Arms Syrah. By 11:30 we (there were about 20 of us) had finished harvesting the two blocks and had picked around 3 tons of grapes. Not bad for a bunch of novices. In comparison, a professional crew can pick about the same amount of fruit in under an hour. But I’m sure they don’t have as much fun! We followed the pick with lunch on Mark and Ginny’s porch and drank a few bottles of the 2006 Eight Arms Syrah to celebrate the occasion. The wine tastes great and is finally coming out of bottle shock. It’s very fruity with a balanced mouth feel. Once the truck was loaded it we drove the one and a half hours back to the winery. We unloaded the grapes, hand-sorted and destemmed them into a couple of half-ton fermentation bins. This morning I went back up to the winery to check the sugar and acid levels. The grapes looked pretty good but the sugar levels were a little bit lower then expected. This will not be a powerful Syrah but more of a refined Northern Rhone style. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks to everyone for there help yesterday. Enjoy the pictures.

The Truck

Hard At Work Picking Grapes

Sue

John

Nelson

Mark Weston (Owner Of St. Mark's Vineyard)

Rob & Yoshi

Yujin

Ellyn

Freshly Picked Syrah Grapes

A Relieved Crew At The End Of Harvest

Hand-Sorting The Grapes


Hand-Sorting The Grapes

Freshly Crushed Syrah Grapes