Harvest Report

Ashley with a bin of zin

As much as I love Fall I sometimes forget how busy we get. From our lack of blog posts you might think we've been sitting on our butts watching baseball for the last month (well now we have been doing that for the last week and a half - Yay Giants!). We have been very busy picking grapes, cooking many delicious meals, harvesting my dad's grapes, picking figs and apples, gathering walnuts, attending music festivals and concerts, and generally being really tired from working so many long hours. Harvest in the vineyard has been going strong. We started on September 30 and picked pretty consistently for the next three weeks. The weekend before last we got over 8 inches of rain here - and at least five fell all on Sunday. Last week it was cold and it rained a little more. So it has been a very difficult harvest, which seems only appropriate after such a tough growing season. It is November 2 and we still have about 30 tons hanging out on the vine - this is very late - we rarely ever pick in November. Hopefully we will finish harvest this week, but there are a couple blocks of Cabernet that just aren't quite ready yet. Will they get any better if we let them hang out for another week in November? That's the big question. The days are getting short, the weather is risky, and there is a lot of water in the ground from the last rains (more than what I would irrigate in an entire season). However, it could be 80 degrees on Wednesday, maybe it will be enough sun and ripening weather to just bump up the sugar, lower the acid a touch and soften those tannins. So far, most of the grapes we have harvested this year have had ripe flavors at lower sugar levels, which we love. In general, the 2010 harvest is following that of a typical cool climate growing area - sugar on the low side, acid on the high side, and nice flavors from a long easy, cool ripening period. I am definitely looking forward to this harvest and this growing season ending - its been pretty rough. Then it's mud, rain, scotch and cozy fires in the wood stove.

Matt picks grapes at the Anderson vineyard