Vino In My Dino

Harvest 2014 Ends

September 25, 2014 15:34

To recap, we began on August 19 with Sauvignon Blanc and ended with Cabernet Sauvignon on September 24, 5 weeks and two days later. One of the great things about writing a newsletter since 1990 is I have copious copy illustrating our harvests year after year. There is quite a bit of talk about this being a super early vintage so I looked up the ‘earliest’ harvest we have recorded which is 2004 when we picked Sauvignon Blanc on August 11 and I see we brought in Cabernet Sauvignon over Labor Day weekend. We finished early in the third week of September.

This year it was a very compressed harvest for a couple of reasons: the weather stayed with us and didn’t cool off or heat up too much and some vineyards ripened ahead of schedule. For instance we picked estate Merlot before our growers harvested their Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The second reason has to do with availability of picking crews. Manuel Diaz, Vineyard Foreman, said he had a steady supply of men and women to do the picking-in other years we had to wait until a full crew could be mustered, hoping the grapes would hang in there until they could bring in the fruit. While it is a few more days until we finish fermentation, here's a toast to all of our hard working crews in the vineyard and cellar on our 87th harvest!

2014 Harvest Gondola

Tags: Pedroncelli, Harvest, machine harvesting, weather, fermentation
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