Harvest Prep on Spring Mountain!

HARVEST PREP ON SPRING MOUNTAIN!

Greetings from the top of Spring Mountain!

With the month of September beginning tomorrow, and the first sparkling wine grapes making their way off the vines in and around Napa, the final preparations have begun at Vineyard 7&8 to get ready for the 2011 harvest.

As of this morning, our estate grown Chardonnay is finally nearing completion of veraison, while our estate grown Cabernet continues progressing nearing 75% veraison. Like many growers in California this year, harvest will be later, crops may tend to be slightly lower due the the late spring rains during flowering, but we are very enthusiastic about the fruit we have growing on the vines.

With maybe one month to go until harvest beings here at the winery, we have been working on getting geared up for our fall release of our two "Estate" only wines including the release of our 2008 "Estate" Cabernet Sauvignon and our 2009 "Estate" Chardonnay. Both wines that we are truly jazzed about sharing very soon!

This summer we readied the cellar by bottling our two 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon labels from Vineyard 7&8, and have sent them off to rest in the warehouse until they are ready for release in 2012. See below for some fun photos of the bottles traveling along the bottling line.

For now, its back to walking the vineyards, continuing to give them a drink of water as they need it, get ready to put up the bird netting on the chardonnay, and being cleaning and sanitizing the winery for the grapes to come.

Wishing the best of luck to everyone this harvest! Looking forward to another challenge for the harvest of 2011, and yet another great vintage of wines in the Napa Valley.

Cheers!

Wesley Steffens
Vineyard 7&8
http://www.vineyard7and8.com/