2007 Harvest Wrap Up

It's been a busy eight weeks--harvest started in early September, but then a heat spell and cooler weather following the heat delayed further picking until October, when it all began coming in at once!  In the meantime, we were also packing and labeling hundreds of Fall 2007 wine club orders.

This year we had planned to purchase less fruit than usual, but the vintage looked so good, we ended up buying more fruit than ever before.  At right, zinfandel clusters from Benito Dusi's 90-year-old vines are being gently forked into the crusher.

All the fruit this year had exceptional pigment--Dan was especially pleased with our estate fruit.  Most of the central coast was reporting lower tonnage this year, but both our estate zinfandel--which is dryfarmed and head-trained--and Benito Dusi Vineyard--also dryfarmed and headtrained--produced significantly heavier crops.  Although since these vineyards typically produce limited tonnage in the first place, any increase in cluster load is significant.  And with the quality of this year's fruit, also cause for excitement. 

At left, you can see the red-brown stems from a Dusi zinfandel cluster.  This is a sign that the zinfandel vines and clusters have had time to fully mature.

Some vineyards, including Dusi and our estate vineyard, were picked in several different passes so we could bring in the fruit at its peak of ripeness and balance.  With only a few weather hiccups, we enjoyed warm days and cool autumnal breezes throughout harvest.  (None of those grueling late nights and freezing temperatures we remember from recent El Nino vintages.)  Dan kept the fruit coming in at a steady pace so each day's work could be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time--which meant 10 hour days for me, and 12-14 hour days for Dan. 

Below, you can see the whole berries falling from the crusher into the fermenting bin.  Our crusher/destemmer is set to a slow speed, so rather than macerating the berries as they pass through, the equipment simply rips the berries from the stems and drops them more-or-less whole into the fermentor.  A good deal of juice is extracted simply by the weight of the grapes themselves.  (The crusher ejects the stems into another bin and the stems are then dumped into compost piles at the edge of the vineyard.) The bins are inoculated with yeast and lined up in the winery to ferment for 10+ days.  The bins will be punched down by hand twice a day, and when they have finished fermenting, the fruit is poured into a press.  The juice, which is now elementary wine, is extracted and barreled down--the grape skins are removed to the compost area, where birds and wild turkeys come for happy hour.

In early September, Paso experienced an extreme heat spike--several days in the high 90's--and vineyards reported rapidly increasing sugars.

However, a heat spike can be misleading.  Instead of sugars rising, what actually happens is that the berries dehydrate, losing moisture through their skin, and the resulting sugar-to-juice ratio increases.  This can be prevented by gentle drip irrigation to keep the vine roots cool, hydrated, and providing some consistent moisture to the vines and berries.  So instead of pulling a "panic pick" as it's referred to among us grizzled few, we advised our vineyard owners to irrigate slightly and wait out the heat.

After the heat spell was over, temperatures dropped by 15 degrees, sucking in ocean air and moisture.  Cooler temps throughout September pushed back much of our harvesting until October.  We waited and waited for the optimum combination of sweet sugar, toasty seeds, pliable skins, brown/red stems, a perfect pH and acidity, and delicious juice.

We picked most of our estate zinfandel earlier in October, but we just picked the tip top, limestone exposed ridge on Tuesday, November 13th.  Dan was thrilled with the color, balance and flavor, and declared himself a brilliant grower as well as a brilliant winemaker.  (His only audience was me and the dog.)

Harvest is over!

Comments

[Lisa]

bought a 1983 benuto duci zin way back in the day...has been a favorite ever since...can't wait for the new release.