update from the thick of it

The tough thing about a blog about wine making is that the most exiting part of winemaking is too exiting to have time to write about how exiting it is.

In the brief time and energy i have between last Saturday's harvest of Fruitland Ridge Pinot Noir and this Saturday's harvest of Wahluke Slope Syrah here's where we are so far.

On Friday we drove up to Willits where we picked up a trailer from U-Hual that is suppose to haul 1600LB and travel down the road no faster than 45mph (both proven wrong). The gentleman at Willits tire center saw the 60 yellow picking bins in and on the car and asked if we were getting mushrooms (i snickered) - no grapes.

Friday we learned that the grapes wouldn't be picked by the 10AM hour as we'd hoped buy later, maybe much later (gulp). So we visited the local wine bar, the local liquor store, the local cajun restaurant and two of the local watering holes. 2 bottles of wine and 4 shots of makers mark later we were ready to settle in for the evening.


Saturday AM (10:00) we made our way up to Elk Prairie and the picking was underway but falling behind as there was a smaller picking crew then originally anticipated. With that news we were handed some clippers and put to work. Lesson learned - we suck at picking grapes but dug having the opportunity to find out.

Saturday PM (3:00) we started weighing the grapes and transferring to our bins for the drive south.

Saturday PM (3:45) we started out climb down the hill trailer of grapes in tow. FWIW, we had originally planned on making it to Glen Park prior to 3PM.

Saturday PM (8:42) we rolled into Glen Park and those still waiting helped unload and start the sorting process.

Sunday AM (1:30) bed time.

Sunday AM (7:30) off to get coffee and pastries and back to sorting.

Sunday PM (5:30) grapes are crushed, bins are being washed and we're about spent. Cold soak begins.

Monday/Tues - continue w/cold soak thanks to dry ice from SF Ice Co.


Wednesday PM (6:30) fermentation starts on pinot.

Tomorrow we drive up to Washington to prepare for the syrah harvest on Saturday. We hope to have this in the tank and fermentation going strong by Monday AM at which point we'll heading back to CA to press the pinot mid-week and fly back to WA to press the syrah on the 1st/2nd of November.

phewww.... we'll have more details and photos, winey geek stats and continue to show you how things are doing after the 2 weeks of craziness subside.


wishful thinking (the movie)