Harvest Part 3

With a cool and wet spring with some torrential storms, a wetter then normal July and a tropical storm at the start of Harvest mother nature is finally being friendly.

We still have our Merlot (Hill Block), Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon left out in our vineyard. We also have some Tannat coming from off site as well as some more Cabernet Franc. All of these grapes were almost harvested the week of September 22 to 26 but we decided that we would test mother nature once again. Finally...she gave us the break and is giving us some of the best ripening weather we could ask for. It has gotten up to 70ish during the day and cooling off at night to the mid 50's and even 40's to allow the acidity to stay fresh while further maturing the seeds, skins and flavor.

We have started to taste some of our blend potentials for our whites as well and have finished most to the barrel ferments of Viognier and Chardonnay. Our main white blend that we are currently doing trials on is our Charval (with a face lift this year) is looking to be a blend of about 58% Chardonnay (about half of which comes from Clone 96 - a musque clone adding more banana and tropical aromatics) and 42% Sauvignon Blanc. The barrels have fermented beautifully with only the Wild Yeast barrels of both Chardonnay and Viognier still working away. The wild yeast has been a lot of fun being a slower and cooler fermenter in all cases so far preserving the aromatics and expressing more or our "Terroir". Our Virginia Oak trials have also been very successful thus far with Chardonnay ferments but it is still very early to tell. Any way we can express our vineyard and location "terroir" we will strive to do so by staying as local as possible with everything in our winemaking.

We have also just brought in about 3 tons of Petit Verdot that could sneak it's way into our flagship Meritage as well as our soon to be released "secret wine" (see the past blog) on November 1st. It would obviously go into next years edition though. The cold soak is showing great color already, with a lovely black pepper note in the juice. We are quite excited.

Anyway, I have to get back down to the cave and help our assistant winemaker Jon Boyle racking our 2008 Syrah - very yummy.

Until next time - Cheers!