Harvest time

Harvest started this morning!


Our vineyard management crew arrived early and are busy picking the top part of the vineyard.

As you can see from the photos, the leaves are changing colour and this indicates that they have stopped making sugar and are shutting down. The grapes are therefore as sweet as they will get - and measuring their "brix" level - sugar level - they seem to be great.





The harvest is lighter than previous years but this seems to be the same throughout northern CA this year.

I've just wandered the vineyard and it's always such a happy day. You hear the chat of the vineyard workers - in spanish - but it always sounds happy. I've never been out there when they don't sound cheerful. Some singing, some joking, and plenty of talk that I can't understand! Yet they work so hard. They cut quickly, using a curved knife, put the grapes in small bins then when their bin is full, they put it in half ton bins on the tractor.

In a couple of the photos you'll see my husband next to the tractor, talking to the crew organizer. They are discussing which grapes to harvest. The sugar levels have been measured throughout the vineyard and these determine which grapes get harvested. The levels vary depending on the position, so today they are hoping to harvest 5 tons from the very top and then down the right hand side. The other grapes will continue to ripen and increase their sugar levels until they are harvested next week. As our vineyard is on a slope, the top ones always ripen first - and have the best flavours!

We have now picked 3 tons - one of the photos shows 3 half ton bins on the truck and then another three full bins on the driveway with Chris the vineyard manager driving the tractor with three more empty ones, ready to be filled.

Well- this ends today's viticulture lesson! Hope you like the photos and get a sense of the day!

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.....