Harvest season is now entering its final stages. There are still a few vineyards hanging fruit. But it’s still within the normal time frame for them to develop their maximum sugars later in the season. This year’s harvest came rather early as we saw the first of the crop come in mid-August. That’s normal timing for white wine grapes, but it was a bit unusual to see some of the red wine vineyards ripen that early.
To be honest, I was not surprised by the early fruit due to the heat wave we experienced during the first week of June. The heat wave wreaked havoc throughout the valley burning a significant percentage of the infantile grapes. Early estimates of loss neared the 60-70% on certain blocks, however, the vines bounced back and the losses are averaging 30%-50%. Although the yields have been lighter than normal, the quality of fruit has not suffered. We spent a lot of time removing the damaged crop off the vines prior to full ripening to ensure that the plant would focus all of its available energy on the remaining healthy crop.
We have seen some beautiful wines come out of fermentation this year and look forward to sharing them with you in a couple years. If your curious to see some of the wine operations that occur during this special season watch the video of me “Punching Down” the grapes with our very talented winemaker Nadia. Note that our Doffo Barrel Club members harvested these grapes in the video.
I look forward to sharing more updates with you about this year’s harvest as we continue to work hard on producing exceptional hand crafted red wines!
Salute
