As I was slipping out the door this morning, I remembered that I hadn’t written this week’s post. So, that makes this post the most up to date yet. I’m slipping out the door because we’re picking merlot today and 
we start picking at 4:30 am. It really is the best time to pick grapes…not necessarily the best time to write a post though. This past week we’ve been busy with all of our winemaking duties (see video) while we’ve been patiently waiting for the red grapes to reach their desired level of ripeness. The vineyard crew has started some of the winterization projects (erosion control, compost spreading, covering the equipment not being used for harve st, etc.) and have been playing a bit of break time soccer (futbol). With the harvest about 40-50% complete, it seemed like a good time to reflect on the amount of time that was put into growing the season’s crop. I started counting the number of passes we made in each block of the vineyard and realized that we made 10 passes (on average) in each block this year. If you do the basic math, that’s pretty impressive with a group of 7 guys. 100 acres x 1500 vines/acre =150,000 vines x 10 passes. Wow! No wonder the grapes look so good. With that kind of attention who wouldn’t look good. I can tell you for sure, at 4:30 in the morning, those grapes look a lot better than I do. Here comes the merlot!
we start picking at 4:30 am. It really is the best time to pick grapes…not necessarily the best time to write a post though. This past week we’ve been busy with all of our winemaking duties (see video) while we’ve been patiently waiting for the red grapes to reach their desired level of ripeness. The vineyard crew has started some of the winterization projects (erosion control, compost spreading, covering the equipment not being used for harve st, etc.) and have been playing a bit of break time soccer (futbol). With the harvest about 40-50% complete, it seemed like a good time to reflect on the amount of time that was put into growing the season’s crop. I started counting the number of passes we made in each block of the vineyard and realized that we made 10 passes (on average) in each block this year. If you do the basic math, that’s pretty impressive with a group of 7 guys. 100 acres x 1500 vines/acre =150,000 vines x 10 passes. Wow! No wonder the grapes look so good. With that kind of attention who wouldn’t look good. I can tell you for sure, at 4:30 in the morning, those grapes look a lot better than I do. Here comes the merlot!
