Harvest Continues at Merryvale

Even with this week's high temperatures, harvest continues steadily, but not frantically, at Merryvale and Starmont. By tomorrow, we will have finished harvesting Sauvignon Blanc, and on Thursday we completed harvesting our Pinot noir, all from the Stanly Ranch in Carneros. We started harvesting Chardonnay, and Chardonnay will be the main focus for the next two weeks. Today we harvested some Hyde Chardonnay from an enticing block of mixed clones that exhibit exotic floral flavors.

We have begun harvesting some Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from earlier ripening sites, but we anticipate continuing to harvest Cabernet throughout the rest of this month and into October. Attached is a picture of us harvesting one of our earliest Cabernet lots from this morning at our Estate in the foothills overlooking St. Helena.

We are really excited about the early flavor development, and are finding developed and concentrated flavors, the disappearance of green flavors, resolved tannins, and brown seeds at lower Brix than recent years.

Cheers!
Remi