Here's were we are at though this morning.
The Chardonnay is in barrel, 100% topped up and we've started the routine of stirring the lees every two weeks. We're not sure if has completed Malolactic yet, we'll have to send off for a lab test in another few weeks. There are 5 full barrels plus about 20 gallons of topping wine. We should end up with just about 120 cases when we are all done!
The Crimson Clover Cabernet Sauvignon is also in barrel. Right now it's in one new barrel, one old barrel and about 2/3 of another new barrel with the rest topped with Argon. We'll transfer that 2/3 of a barrel into one smaller size barrel on Saturday. This has turned out really well so far, and we're super excited by this vineyard. It's our second harvest from the site and it looks like a star.
Tuesday we pressed the last of the Haut Tubee, the Chaine d'Or Estate Cabernet Sauvignon and the Split Rail Vineyard Syrah.
There's now enough Haut Tubee to fill a barrel and we will but it in an older Burgundy barrel. The other two wines are settling in tank now, letting the chunks fall to the bottom. We've been surprised by the aromatics of the Split Rail and think this vineyard is a keeper. The Chaine d'Or Cabernet looks like it will yield 4-5 barrels and it also has a great nose right now and seams very well balanced.
Today Stefania will be in the winery getting barrels ready and on Saturday we will go back up and transfer all those wines into barrel. That will leave us just about two tons of Harvest Moon Cabernet Sauvignon fermenting right now. That fermentation is moving along now but it's very cool, just 60 degrees so it may take a couple more weeks.
We should be back to a more normal routine soon, and hopefully a chance to catch up and get a little rest. We like all the wines we've made this year and think 2009 looks like it will be a very nice vintage for us.
2 comments:
Did you guys not get Syrah from Eaglepoint Ranch this year?
Matt,
We did not get Eaglepoint this year. We had a bunch of factors in that. First it's our lowest margin wine. We pay more for the Eaglepoint grapes that any other grapes and we were looking to lower costs in 2009. We also had a source for Syrah in the Santa Cruz Mountains we wanted to try out. The final factor was we had allocated 56 cases of Syrah to a distributor to sell and by June we knew that they were not going to get the job done and those cases would be coming back to us.
It was very hard to do but in June we leet Casey know we couldn't take grapes this year. I did let him know I'd like to leave it open for 2010 though. We'll likely re-release those now 52 cases in the Spring, and the 2008 version in the Fall.
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