Last day of harvest

The tractor is going back and forth, as the last of the grapes are being harvested.

It always seems sad to see them go. Like an "empty nest". We've been watching these little grapes grow...from tiny flowers, to little green berries, to larger fruit, then as they change colour, then we've tasted them along to the way to see how their flavour develops and in an hour or so, they'll be all gone!

And then the leaves will finish changing colour and drop off and then we'll be back to a garden full of dead looking sticks!!!

But meanwhile, the grapes will be turning into something even better, so I guess it's not toooooooo sad!

This is a merlot leaf necklace I made pretty soon after I started with metal clay. Each different grape varietal has a different shape leaf - so you probably knew this was merlot :-D

A new spring leaf was impressed into the silver clay and fired in place. The leaf obviously burnt away but the clear impression remained. I then added a small amount of green resin to highlight the leaf markings.

But for know, it's farewell little grapes! You did well. Hope you enjoy your journey............and look forward to seeing you again in a couple of years....

Green grape harvest II

We've just harvested the green grapes....not many this year - but still nice to do it. But it's hot out there already! Phew! need to cool off now...

That's my husband in the photo in his new "merlove" tee shirt! And it's his hand with the yellow curved knife that you use to cut the bunches off with.

After we picked the few green ones (this year we got many more from our arbor) we then did some sampling of the vineyard checking the brix level of the merlot grapes in different areas. I took rows 8 to 14 above the oak tree and then did the center section too. As you sample, this is meant to be a random thing, so you try and find a representative sample. The grapes are then "mushed" up (very technical term!) and a little of the juice is put in a refractometer and from that you can read the brix - which is the sugar content!

This is useful to guide the decision on when to harvest. It's not only the brix important - other things too - like acid levels etc - but brix is a good indicator.

In previous years, our buyers have only wanted one harvest so some of the grapes were a little over ripe and some were under ripe and some were just perfect. We sell to Havens now and they like to harvest different sections at different times as they ripen at different times. Normally we harvest the top section first ( most of the vineyard is on a slope), then above the oak tree, then generally the rest is pretty much the same as it is on just a gentle slope or no slope at all.

The brix today are: 24.1 for the top section - that means we may be harvesting those next week. The ones I sampled are 22.2 and 22.8 - so probably a couple of weeks yet before they are ready but as we've been having such hot weather lately...who knows.....

Wine bottling

Well today our 2006 wine was bottled. Yippee! It would have been nice to say "we bottled our 2006 wine" but this year the winery where it is housed had a mobile bottling line come in - a big truck that has the bottling line inside - and so it is all over and done with in about 10 minutes! We didn't even go and see it as they were busy doing all their bottling in a week!!!

The first year we made our wine, we did everything ourselves - and filling the bottles was like milking a cow (not that I've ever milked a cow!). So I'm glad we had that experience - even if we seem to do less and less hands on each year....

We haven't finalized our wine label for this vintage yet either.... I wrote a first draft and John changed a few words and that's as far as we have got. Guess we need to get on with that now that there are bottles waiting to be labelled. At least we get to do the labelling..with the help of a machine and some friends.
Each year we change the back label - which is where I write my little story for the year - and we also change the colour of the label. So far we have had yellow, turquoise/teal, and orange. We have agreed that for 2006 we are going with green for the label. It took quite a lot of persuading John - but I think he is OK with it. It's a nice fresh green. My favourite colour is lime green so I was pushing for something like that. Let's hope it works out OK.

Then we'll have to go through the ordeal of keep tasting the wine to see how long it has bottle shock!!! Yes, when first put into the bottle, the wine goes into a state of "shock". We like to track the shock passage by drinking our new wine regularly and seeing how it changes day by day! I know - what a tough job to do!!!

And talking of bottle-shock - we are going to see the movie "Bottle Shock" tonight that was filmed in Glen Ellen and Sonoma! All about the wine competition in 1976 when French wines were up again California wines in a blind tasting - and the California wines won! There was alot of excitement during the local filming and lots of locals had small parts etc - so it should be fun to see the final result.

Naturally I have done some grape pieces of jewelry. Not recently though - these are all older pieces.....pins, necklaces.... I used to show my work at some winery events locally and so the grape pieces were quite popular there. I do less events nowadays - but do have one coming up at Ravenswood winery in Sonoma in September. If you are local - come by and see me. The details are on my website www.birdlandcreations.com

Well, think of us, working hard at tasting our wine and charting it's progress. I'll try not to whine about it!