Our Harvest

This year’s harvest 2011.  We are done!  This is the first year we have harvested all our vineyards.  Our latest vineyard has even been harvested this year!

This year’s actual picking days were fortunate with the weather in that we only had one day that the rain came while picking.  The rest of the picking was beautiful sunny days without wasps..so that was good.  We even had some volunteers help us and our wwoofers. 

The fruit was similar to 2010 and even some days the exact same date we picked.  We are happy because we managed to pull out our wines last year and surprised people with the quality.  So Mark just has to be a bit more diligent and creative with our wines again this year; but Mark loves a challenge.  We might even have 2 new products based on this year.  We again are involved in the picking and this gave us excellent control over the quality of the grapes received. We select the grapes to put in our picking bins right on the vine and hand-pick. 

We hoped to get more Pinot Gris this year because of the limited volumes; we did get more; however, not as much as we hoped for.  With the weather for 2011, we are very happy that are volumes are similar or slightly higher than last year, the fruit was clean and had nice bunches.  Mark was able to do the batches still in smaller volumes and control the grapes and manage them right away, so that also is critical for great wines.  Our helpers this year also were great to assist in the winemaking process so our backs are also thankful!  So a good harvest and looking forward to what comes out of this.  Cheers!