Hiya folks, its time to find the tylenol, TUMS, and valium- aka, winemakers’ best friends during harvest. Crush ‘09 started yesterday kinda urgently– Ya see, last Friday I went out to our see how our tempranillo vineyard was doing with an eye to choosing a harvest date. The fruit was at about 24-25 brix and already displaying lots of darker berry characteristics and
about a week off from harvest. Unfortunately there was only a few days to get it off the vine since there was a big storm coming in that was projected to drop several inches of rain. So in order to deal with the rain my grower and I decided to harvest roughly half the Tempranillo fruit yesterday. We are going to let the soil dry for a week or so then take the rest with, hopefully a tad more sugar. The couple tons that have come in will be cold soaked for 3-4 days then I’ll start pulling samples to get “the numbers” i.e. pH, TA, and actual brix. With any luck, by the time fermentation is done, my barrel order will have arrived.

On an entirely unrelated note, while pouring last week at the Monterey wine festival, the folks next to me were serving samples of a gorgeous sangiovese. Rich fruit, huge spice and just plain yummy… undoubtedly the finest example of the grape I’ve tried from California. The wine is made by the legendary Chuck Ortman and his son. Check out Ortman Family Vineyards 2007 Sangiovese at roughly $25 its well worth the price of admission.