Eaglepoint Ranch Pick Up

Still more random photos. We drove up to Eaglepoint Ranch on Monday afternoon and had a nice dinner with Casey and Lynn. Tuesday morning it was up early for the 5+ hour drive back.

Stef at 6:10 AM getting ready to go.


Part of Casey's wall of fame. I think he'd actually like to put up pain in the ass winemakers here.

Me pulling out leafs and other MOG as we pick.

This year Casey lost almost 70% of his normal yield. We only got 1 ton.

Stef walking through our section of vines. Last year our section yielded 6200 pounds. This year it was about 700 pounds. Casey cancelled contracts with many producers so a few of us could have what little was left. We ended up picking from 17 rows to get one ton.

The 1989 Block at Eaglepoint. The Sun wasn't up over the mountain yet when we finished picking.

The mandatory, "Paul driving a truck" picture.

The Golden Gate in sight. Just 2 more hours of driving ahead of us at this point.

This was the night before driving up the road to the Ranch. It's a bumpy twisty dirt road.

More of me sorting and removing leafs. Casey is paying his crew by the hour this year. He usually pays by the ton. Most growers pay by the 30 lb bucket. His thought is that by the ton, has them work as a team and be more complete in picking. I always pay by the hour. It's more expensive, but there is less MOG and the vines never need a second pass to pick up what was left.

This is the dividing line between us and Copain. They were picking also Tuesday. We actually got 5 of their rows this year.

Me climbing up on the tractor as we moved to the next spot.

The fruit we got was actually very nice. We sorted it quickly when we got it back to Big Basin, and it was still 59 degrees in the bins. We hope we will end up with about 60 cases total. 2008 will be a tough year for people low on our mailing list. We're just not going to have a lot of wine to go around.