Thursday, September 17th marked the start of the red grape harvest at Quintessa with about four tons of Silverdale South Merlot.
A multi-national crew, including our picking and crush crews, many of whom have been with us since we started harvesting in 1994 and crushing at the winery in 2002, assembled to kick off the 2009 harvest. With the experience of our team, including Crush Forman Hugo Hernandez, who has been at Quintessa since the Huneeus family purchased the property in 1989, and Assistant Winemaker/Cellarmaster Benjamin Ochoa, the first few tons came in without a hitch.
The eastern half of the Silverdale South block, just in front of Quintessa along the Silverado Trail, is typically one of the first blocks harvested each year. Saturday, we will move to the interior of the property and pick Lake Terrace Merlot. Our usual 10-14 days between the start of Merlot harvest and Cabernet Sauvignon harvest will be more compressed this year because of the late start and the next few days of high temperatures we're expecting. We'll start Cabernet Sauvignon harvest begin by the end of next week.
At around 9 a.m., we stopped to take a moment to recognize the ritual of the Napa Valley Harvest. Father Brenkle from the St. Helena Catholic Church blessed the grapes and we raised a toast with the entire Quintessa family. As they say, it takes a village...
To get a picture of what harvest around here is really like, take a look at our Harvest Film on www.quintessa.com for a look at picking, crushing, winemaking that features the people and passion behind every harvest season at the winery. Or better yet, come for a visit and see it up close and live. Off we go!
At Cakebread Cellars, we began our 2009 cabernet sauvignon harvest this morning with a load of night picked fruit from our Maple Lane Vineyards.
So far we are very happy with the condition of the fruit that has come in, especially with our whites (sauvignon blanc and chardonnay). The cool season has left the vines in prime condition and the fruit is in remarkable shape with very little disease pressure or sunburn. Overall, we are seeing good flavors at very desireable chemistry as we have been able to reach a high level at maturity at very modest brix levels.
Looking forward, we expect this trend to continue as the phenolic levels in the red grapes look very good as does the weather outlook. We have spent the last few days assessing our vineyards with regards to their ability to weather the upcoming heat and we are confident that we are well prepared and any impacts will be minor.
St. Supery's cellar is in full swing as we are bringing in the last trucks of our white grapes: Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Semillon and Muscat Canelli.
Our grapes started coming in the beginning of August and the scent of fermenting juice permeates the cellar (and the office, too!). We all know what happens to the juice but what about all the other stuff? Stems, seeds, pulp, skins and goo (collectively known as pomace) that is collected in the large dump bins situated outside the winery?
On a busy day in the vineyard, our crew can pick enough grapes to fill four bins with pomace. Each black "bin" contains about 40 tons of pomace.
What do we do with it? Because St. Supery practices sustainable farming, we try to reduce and reuse everything we take out of the vineyard. These black boxes are trucked back to our family-owned estate vineyard and its contents emptied into our compost 'mini-mountain'. On an average year's harvest, we can turn almost 800 tons of pomace into compost. It takes about 10 months to fully decompose the waste into nutrient-rich compost that is tilled back into the vineyard.
This past year, our vineyard manager, Josh Anstey, brought 2 bins to our adopted school, Valley Oak, to replenish their learning garden. Valley Oak, a continuing education high school is part of the NVV sponsored 'Adopt-a-School' program.
Onward and upward! Looks like some of our Dollarhide Cabernet Sauvignon is coming in early tomorrow morning. More pomace!
Tina Cao, PR/Marketing Manager St. Supery Vineyards & Winery
The season started back on September 1st with some Sauvignon Blanc followed by one block of Chardonnay and some Pinot Noir from the Las Amigas Vineyard in Carneros over the next week. However, patience has been the name of the game for the past week after the valley received some rain and cooler temperatures last Saturday and Sunday.
If we look at the report from last year, we had already picked all of the above grapes, but we had also brought in Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Viognier and even a block of Cabernet Sauvignon by this time. Waiting is okay, but the danger for the near future could be that everything will be ready all at the same time...meaning the Brix and Acidity levels are at the perfect point we desire for our wines. That can be an issue because there just are not enough hours in the day to pick everything at once.
Hopefully the waiting game will be over by this weekend and we can start picking again. First up...Merlot!
Cheers
Pierre Birebent Vineyard Manager & Winemaker Signorello Vineyards
From Daniel Orrison - Intern at Chateau Montelena 9/16/09
Things around the winery sure are picking up. Over a 160 tons of Chardonnay has been crushed in the last week alone and several tanks have started fermentation. Workdays have gone from 8-hour shifts to an average of 13... and our (the interns) long weekends spent wine tasting and relaxing around the Valley are officially over. I know, the tragedy! This aside, though, life is good-- actually, life is great. The experience we are gaining is priceless and the work is incredibly rewarding. Our responsibility level has also been greatly increased – which means no more babysitting, constant monitoring, or safety tutorials as the amount work at this time of year simply wont allow. But on to a few things I’ve been surprised by thus far.
I’m amazed at how quickly the circumstances of any particular day can fluctuate. There is absolutely no formula or set of guidelines one can follow if he/she wishes to live the harvest lifestyle. Anything can happen! This week alone two presses have broke down, grapes have shown up late, more have come in than expected, rain has been in the forecast (followed by extremely high temperatures), new machinery needs to be adjusted, and the interns are asking about everything… which undoubtedly takes up precious time. Flexibility is key to any great wine we have been told.
I think it’s safe to argue that the winemaker is today’s version of a Renaissance Man… that is, he/she has to do and know a bit about everything. He must be an engineer (who can fix a press when it breaks on the spot… well done, Cameron), a scientist (concerning the who, what, when, where, why, and how to pick the grapes), a romantic (naturally, due to the nature of the business…), an artist (as a wine is most certainly painted), and a craftsmen (for there is always something’s around the winery that must be adjusted by hand). The position is truly interesting as making wine is the perfect mixture of exactly that – craft, art, and science.
In other exciting news around the winery, yesterday we crushed our first batch of Estate Cabernet. The grapes are MUCH smaller and also more thick skinned than the Chardonnay. Which, for the interns, means much easier to sweep and clan up. We also just received a new sorting table (MOG separator) for the crush pad. I’ve been told this too should make our life a bit easier. Spoiled, I know.
But as Cameron has said, the crew really is coming together as a team. Harvest looks to be picking up more so with the heat wave coming through and things should really start to get interesting. Lunches are better than ever… 2260 pounds and counting.
So I wait and I wait and finally it's almost here. I know I sound redundant, but the sugars are still too low and the fruit isn't showing the maturity we want. This weekend's 90 degree heat will help, but I still think we're about 10 days off.
In the meantime, I had my first, pre-6am day. Let me precede this by saying I didn't get to sleep until 2am last night - I had a kitten problem that pushed last night's plan to much later, and then I couldn't sleep. I had to drive 40 miles to walk a vineyard and deliver bins: stop at the vineyard manager's, then the vineyard, then the warehouse - I had traveled about 80 miles before most of my friends got their first cup of coffee at the office. I sometimes long for those days!
I'll take sugars again this Monday and see what the week's done for us. I'm traveling to sell wine this week, getting in some sales before harvest locks me down in Calistoga.
It has been a busy week here at Chateau Montelena since the last post. As of yesterday we have processed 160 tons of Napa Valley Chardonnay! If it sounds like a lot, it is (for us). The numbers are pretty revealing – last year (2008) we harvested 162 tons of Chardonnay in a total of 11 days, so far this year we have picked 160 tons in 7 days, and we still have 6 of the 12 blocks let to pick! Now, to be fair, it is not just that yields are high this year (they are), but rather that yields were down last year across the north coast due to unfavorable weather conditions last spring. That’s farming for ya! Good news is that we’ll have plenty of great Chardonnay for sale in 2011, bad news is that we all have bags under our eyes from the long days – and it is just the beginning.
The past week wasn’t without its challenges either. We had a mechanical failure on our whole cluster press, which took it out of service for about 2 days while we were figuring out where to get the parts, which then had to be overnighted from Ohio. On a brighter note, we received our brand new custom built post-destemmer-sorter (otherwise known as a MOG separator - follow this link to see a video of it in action), designed to ensure that only grapes (no raisins or stem chips) make it into the tank or press. It is working well, but required a lot of fine tuning to get it just right – Chardonnay can be kinda tricky since it is a thin skinned grape.
The crew is holding up well and really coming together as a team – the great harvest lunches this year have definitely helped. The photo at top right is our pre-season weigh in – 2260 pounds of grape crushing force – a veritable ton of fun! We’re going to get a post season weight as well, so we’ll see just how good the crush lunches really are.
Our intern Daniel Orrison will have his post ready for tomorrow, so check back then.
BTW - Daniel is third from the left in the front row and I'm in the back with the spectacles.
While many vintners are busy bringing in their winegrapes, others are on the road and involved in a different staple of harvest season: the promotion of September as California Wine Month.
In the photo above, taken today on the balcony of Grand Central Station, three Napa Valley vintners (left to right: Dick Ward of Saintsbury, Kathleen Heitz Myers of Heitz Wine Cellars, and Suzanne Groth of Groth Vineyards & Winery) pour for invited trade buyers and wine media.
Napa Valley winery promotions of California Wine Month include:
So here I am wandering in the vineyard still looking for something to pick. It’s not much of a harvest Blog unless I can fine some grapes ready to come in. But never fear, we went out tasting again Monday morning and I think we have a winner; some juicy looking Sauv. Blanc grapes that will be ripe and ready come in Thursday morning. My next Blog should have a photo of us actually working, what a relief that will be!
Thanks for hanging in there (is this what they mean by “hang time”?)
Driving up the valley this morning I deeply inhaled the wonderful fragrance of harvest in the Napa Valley. What an amazing time of year! The vines are heavy with fruit and anticipation is in the air for what is expected to be a fantastic harvest, both in quality and quantity.
Here at Broman Cellars we plan to produce two varietals for this vintage – Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon. We just harvested some really beautiful Sauvignon Blanc last week from the Beckstoffer Melrose Vineyard in Rutherford – a whopping 6.1 tons! This is a nice amount of excellent fruit, which will translate to an increase in case production over our 2008 SB. Yippee!
The two vineyards with which we contract, Beckstoffer’s Dr. Crane Vineyard and their Georges III vineyard have some time to go. Our own vineyard on our property is looking to be several weeks away from harvest.
So now we play the waiting game and hope that the weather and Mother Nature cooperate! The rains of these past couple of days were enough to knock the dust down, but not much more.
Lisa Broman Augustine Director of Sales & Marketing (and everything else!) Broman Cellars
"Thunderbolt and lightning-very very frightening me" --Queen, "Bohemian Rhapsody"
"There's a threat of rain on the dark horizon and all that's left is a quarter moon of light" --Sting, "After the Rain has fallen."
The astute weather watcher out there knows that Napa went through a bit of a rollercoaster this past weekend. Saturday morning, 2:30 AM, I'm in my back yard in old wildland gear and boots, monitoring the fire band radio, wondering if we're going to have to deal with the "Napa Wildfire of '09". Fortunately, the dry lightning stayed well South of us.
Sunday evening had very light sprinkles, great for keeping the dust down. In fact, it was just enough to clean the dust off our solar panels, and our array is back up to 100%, no water or squegee required!
The system dropped about 0.16 inch of rain to us here at the top of the Spring Mountain District, giving our red varietals a much needed drink...we dry farm here...so this is the first sip they haven't had to work for since the springtime. This has resulted in both sugar and acid levels droping fairly uniformly across the vineyard...more waiting.
The only serious concern was our Chardonnay, which is still about a week away from harvest. Although we had no signs of Botrytis going into this weekend, we want to make sure our fruit stays clean and mold free. Fortunately, the sun was out, and a gentle breeze dried off most of the fruit quickly. Chardonnay grows in very dense and tight clusters, and these tend to trap and hold moisture...what we needed today was a really large blow drier: enter the minds of Fred and Andy Schweiger...
What you see below is something quite novel this time of year, my father, driving an empty sprayer...it's our BLOW DRIER! Our spray rig is equipped with a very large, powerful fan, producing about a 50 mph breeze through the vines. Although you can't see it in the video, droplets of water are blowing out of the clusters, providing us with clean, dry fruit.
Cheers,
Andy Schweiger, Winemaker and blow dry stylist, Schweiger Vineyards.
The busy bees below were picking and crushing our estate Syrah for the better part of today. I saw my brother Alan out there in his vineyard hat, driving the tractor and forklift carrying a few half-ton bins of Syrah into the crushpad area for processing.
Alan's next plan of attack: Cabernet Franc (pictured right).
Note his trusty chocolate lab Emma by his side. This morning she was barking and barking, hanging around Alan when he was driving the farming equipment. She also has a bad habit of running around the tractor as she yaps away...
Bright and early this morning the ZD Tasting Room troops met up with Chris Pisani, our Winemaker, and Rafael Llamas, our Vineyard Manager, for a taste of life in the vineyards pre-Harvest.There has been a lot of waiting and watching taking place at the winery these days as we anticipate the Harvest crush and, today, the Tasting Room staff was granted a behind the scenes look at what this waiting entails.
Pulling into the deLeuze Family Vineyards from the Carneros Highway, you are greeted by a charming old house surrounded by vineyards for as far as the eye can see.A small chicken coop near the back door filled with peeping chicks is a welcome reminder that you’ve arrived someplace special and seemingly untouched by the buzz and hum of Napa Valley, the destination.You are immediately transported back to the agricultural roots that make this location so unique.
Walking over to the vines you can see chickens in a range of colors scampering about and snacking happily on vine-loving insects.They are one faction of ZD’s sustainable farming techniques designed to harmoniously marry the art of winemaking with healthy vines and soil.Gazing at the chickens stand Rafael and Chris who are ready to lead the group through the vineyards for a closer look at the grapes that make up our wines.
First up is Chardonnay.The grapes are developing beautifully and we are anticipating Harvest in the coming week or two.Sampling some of the grapes was such a treat and we all found ourselves steeling quick nibbles of the sweet grapes, warmed and mellowed by the morning sun.
The Pinot Noir grapes are planted furthest from our starting position and, as we meandered over, the deep purple fruit looked picturesque hanging in small clusters along the vines.Chris trimmed a bunch of the Hanzel-selection grapes for the group to try.The tightly bunched clusters of smallish grapes are a point of pride for Chris and the winemaking team.The sparsely irrigated vines result in low-yielding, intensely flavored grapes ideal for our Pinot Noir.
Using a Pressure Bomb to test the stress-level of the vines (I’m hoping to try the Pressure Bomb on myself later today), we were able to witness the small droplets of liquid eked out of the tested vine, revealing how the surrounding environment has affected the plant.The Pressure Bomb measures the amount of pressure that exists in the vine between the roots and the tips and is used to evaluate how much need the plant has for water or how well it has adapted to its environment.The results?The vines are in peak condition for harvest.
Bringing samples back to the winery, Chris will test the brix and ph levels in the grapes to further forecast our Harvest date.In the meantime, the cellar is sparkling as the Winemaking Crew has scrubbed, sprayed, cleaned and prepped in anticipation of the first truckload of grapes.Hopefully we will have some more harvest news to report in the coming days!Stay tuned.
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.
We just brought in our first Chenin Blanc in 5 years from our newly replanted vineyard! The Chappellet Chenin Blanc is a fabulous wine – crisp & lively with lots of citrus and stone fruit – look forward to trying it in a few months. We’ll be playing with the fermentation a little – using a Nomblot Egg (concrete egg) to experiment with.
We’ll pull some Chardonnay from our Oak Knoll vineyard next week. Pritchard Hill reds are coming along, with maybe some Malbec and Merlot by late next week, or early the following. Cabernet is still at least a few weeks out. The Cabernet crop is about average for Pritchard Hill but quality looks really, really good right now. Last of the hot weather for awhile today, with maybe a little rain next week…wouldn’t be harvest if we didn’t have to worry about something!
The vibe at the winery has certainly changed and it’s formally ‘game on’. This is a great time to visit wine country and experience it for yourself! Over and out!
Harvest at the Quintessa estate officially started last Friday when we picked our Illumination Bench block of Sauvignon Blanc from the Quintessa property.
This small Sauvignon Blanc vineyard sits right on the famous Rutherford Bench, in a cool spot next to the Napa River. The fruit came in beautifully, with a small crop and really good intensity. After we pressed the grapes, it went into two of our concrete egg fermenters and a few neutral oak barrels for fermentation with aromatic yeasts. Right now it is humming along nicely.
We will see more Sauvignon Blanc tomorrow from a vineyard in South Napa, Semillon from Calistoga in a week or so and some from our own Faust Vineyard the week after next. I plan to use a combination of stainless steel, concrete and barrel fermentations and both native and more aromatic yeasts.
Next week, possibly as early as Tuesday depending on how the next two days of warm weather push flavors along, we expect to see the first Merlot from Quintessa's Silverdale South block. Merlot yields would be a bit below average but it's a bit early to tell with Cabernet. More updates to follow!
I feel like the rabbit out of Alice in Wonderland, the one with the pocket watch running up and down yelling “we’re late, we’re late”, because that’s what we are this year. We usually are harvesting Sauvignon Blanc no later than the first of September, but it looks like the 15th this year. No panic, but I am wasting a lot of energy running up and down the mountain and not picking anything.
This photo is of our La Perla Sauvignon Blanc vineyard ~ two things to notice ~ the vine training is an ancient method called ‘vertical gobelet’ . Head trained, each vine has its own stake and the canes are tied into a goblet shape. This lets us control the canopy on all sides of the vine, removing leaves to expose clusters to morning sun and shading clusters from harsh afternoon rays. Since vines struggle on our steep hillsides with shallow soils, we make sure gobelet vines stay compact and only carry about 3 pounds of fruit per vine. (Of the 225 total planted acres on the Spring Mountain estate, 90 are trained to gobelet ).
Also notice the enormous Grandmother fig tree in the background. Its branches stretch wide and touch the ground. Even the figs are late this year!
I hope to have some news about grapes by the next update, so stay tuned.
Yesterday I caught our cellar assistant, Maurilio Camarillo "red-handed" with bags of berries for sugar sampling and pH tests (our lab is adjacent to the winery office).
With 28 distinct vineyard "blocks" or sections in just under 27 acres - we're doing a lot of berry sampling around the estate vineyard. Alan Viader, winemaker and director of operations, told me this morning that the estate Syrah will be the first variety picked. Skins are dark purple with huge flavor, rich tannins, great texture and the seeds are ripe and brown... We should be picking this Monday!
On our estate vineyard on lower Howell Mountain, we cultivate Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, a tiny bit of Petit Verdot, Syrah and an even tinier bit of Malbec. In addition, we also bring in limited fruit from other Napa vineyards for varietal wines in our "DARE by Viader" line, like the DARE Tempranillo.
This year, we're even taking a stab at something completely new for VIADER -- Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. Trough friends, Alan discovered a block of Sauvignon Blanc off the Silverado Trail, and the Pinot is from the Sonoma Coast AVA. Our first white wine ever will be harvested tonight! Stay tuned...
So I wait and I wait and finally it's almost here. I know I sound redundant, but the sugars are still too low and the fruit isn't showing the maturity we want. Maybe today's 90 degree heat will help, but I still think we're a couple of weeks off.
In the meantime, I had my first, pre-6am day. Let me precede this by saying I didn't get to sleep until 2am last night - I had a kitten problem that pushed last night's plan to much later, and then I couldn't sleep. I had to drive this morning to walk a vineyard and deliver bins: stop at the vineyard manager's, then the vineyard, then the warehouse - I had traveled about 75 miles before most of my friends got their first cup of coffee at the office. I sometimes long for those days!
I'll take sugars again this Saturday and see what the week's done for us. I'm anxiously planning to travel to sell wine next week - and there's a rumor flying that we might see some rain next week - yes, it's harvest. So all I can do is include a picture of the offending kitty - her name is Dusk and she's on restriction - no more late night tree climbing for this miniature cat!
Why would we decide to install beautiful custom made concrete tanks and a new chiller just weeks before harvest? Because we’re daredevils here at Martin Estate!
Or, we’re just completely mad.
Happily, the winery has not erupted into utter chaos. Instead, we seem to be breezing through the installations. And, while we’re hauling and sweating indoors, the Cabernet Sauvignon on our eight-acre Puerta Dorada Vineyard is just buoyant with great juice. The heat spike some folks were worried about have (at present) turned into beautiful, consistently warm days with pleasantly chilly mornings, and the moderate temperatures should lead to seamlessly integrated sugars, acids and tannins in our fruit at harvest time. When our full-time winemaker Frederic Delivert walked the vineyard this morning - something he’s taken to doing on a daily basis now – he was beyond pleased with the healthy canopy and small but concentrated yield.
The fruits of our labor are tasting mighty good this year!
They’re here….Chardonnay grapes that is, not the poltergeist of Alfred Tubbs (he’s always here).
The delivery of 17 tons of Chardonnay from one of our growers in the Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley marked the official start of the 2009 Harvest for us here at Chateau Montelena.This is the 38th consecutive harvest under the current ownership, but there is a much longer history, dating back to the first harvest in 1882 under the direction of the above mentioned Alfred Tubbs – the founder of Chateau Montelena.But enough with the history lesson; that was 127 years ago…So, yesterday’s grapes were both Dijon clones of Chardonnay, clones 809 and 96 to be precise, and this is the first time that we’ve worked with them here at Montelena.So far we’re quite excited about them – we saw great early flavor development without high sugars, which means lower final alcohol, something that we work hard to achieve every year.Yields were very good - about 3.25 tons per acre – especially considering that these vines were T-budded over from Merlot only 2 years ago.The juice tastes great in the tank, so we’ll see how the flavors change during fermentation and aging, but it won’t be until we pull everything out of barrel before bottling next August that we really find out how these new clones fit (or don’t).
The next round of fruit will come in tomorrow – another Dijon clone (76) – so if you’re in the area, stop by in the morning to watch us load the presses.Get here early though, as all of our Chardonnay is harvested at night in order to assure that we receive cool firm fruit – this preserves the delicate flavors, helps prevent damage or unwanted microbial growth in the picking bins, and reduces the amount of energy needed to cool the juice during the initial settling.After that, we should be off and running, with fruit coming in every day from that point on.I expect we’ll be picking the first Estate Cabernet Sauvignon grapes sometime next week….
Until next week, Happy Harvesting and Cheers from the top of the Napa Valley!
Keep reading to see what our Intern Daniel Orrison had to say about the past week.
The last few weeks have been relatively calm around the winery… cleaning tanks, racking wine, sanitizing (everything you can imagine), cleaning more tanks, and for the interns, trying slow but sure to learn the ins-and-outs of Montelena-- an area I’ve found comes far more from experience than anything else.Fortunately however, experience, is something Montelena does very well.Certain members of the cellar staff have worked at the winery for over 20 years!They may not be able to offer you the book definition of malolactic fermentation, or the theory behind volatile acidity, though, working with them daily I have learned more about wine than I could have ever imagined.For example, the importance of hard work, responsibility, care, dedication to trade, and professionalism (even in the most mundane and simple tasks) that must take place daily for any wine to be successful.In this area alone I have grown as a person and my appreciation for wine and its process has been heightened without the sign of a single grape!
But who wants to talk about topics that don’t involve grapes (especially on a day that will go down in books as the official start of my FIRST harvest)?We received over 13 tons of two different chardonnay clones.They came in early, and if I may, left very late…The day lasted around 13 hours, from 7am to 8pm, which, I’ve been told is relatively tame for any harvest day.Though for me it was the perfect start… I got to marvel at the sheer quantity and quality of fruit brought to the property.I got absolutely soaked, several times I should note, in juice, water, sweat, and more juice throughout the day.I ate my first freshly picked chardonnay grape and took part in my first, ‘famous’ Montelena Harvest lunch.(It lived up to all the hype, fantastic actually… lasagna, salad, garlic bread, fresh fruit, and a dangerously tasty fudge brownie.All consumed in about 15 minutes.They say you are supposed to lose weight during harvest, but at this rate, I’m not so sure… 167 and counting.)The day however seemed to move at a feverish pace, for as quickly as it started, looking back, the ending was quite similar (bike ride through the vineyards to our lovely home on Old Toll).Tomorrow is another day.Can’t wait!
...you're out in a vineyard tasting your Petite Sirah at dusk, want to take some pictures, grab your camera, and realize it's sticky from pulling leaves and taking pictures of this mornings pick of Chardonnay at sunrise.
So here is basically how the day went. To really start, I have to begin with drinking some Pinot Noir in front of the TV late last night, because someone asked me to evaluate it for a future project. That led to falling asleep in place, only to have the wife reach over several times with a sort of loving touch/smack and the kind words of "Go To Bed". Begrudgingly, I crawled myself upstairs, barely got the teeth brushed, and remembered the ever important set the alarm for tomorrow's pick. The next thing I remember is thinking that can't be the alarm, hitting snooze, and lying there half asleep and half awake waiting for the next reminder that I won't be able to fall back asleep anyway. A few more snooze's and off we go.
Jump in the truck and haul a.. out to the vineyard thinking that I'm going to be late. Head down the road toward Caffino (the wrong direction from the vineyard) and realize there is actually a Starbucks on the way. Step on the gas to get to the Starbucks, order my double mocha, wonder what other souls must be out at this ungodly hour, and wait and wait and wait for them to fill the order of one medium (they call it Venti) Mocha. Really how long can it take. Haul a.. out to the vineyard to see the Vineyard Manager waiting for the bins and breathe a sigh of relief that I wasn't late. We pick, pull leaves from the bins, and take some photos. This is where the camera gets sticky, but too busy to notice. Once my truck has a full load I head off to the winery. I make several phone calls to the winery to see how the other vineyards are picking, and make the call as to the order of which things might get pressed. Make the call to hold one press for my grapes and start loading the other with the other grapes coming in all while using my speakerphone on my phone and wondering if holding the phone in hand but not up to my ear really means "Hands Free".
I get to the winery to find out that there are more grapes from the first pick then previously thought, and we'll have to add an extra press load to the already max scheduled day. We begin loading the press, squeezing berries, and collecting juice as fast as we can. Anyone who knows winery work, knows that this means hurry up and wait. Loading the grapes takes about half an hour or so, while running the actual press to get the juice takes roughly two hours. So our pace at the winery is hurry, hurry get the press loaded, get everything else done while it's running, clean the press, and start over.
Usually at the winery in the meantime, this means several conversations with other winemakers about custom crush, making sure sales are on track at the winery, consulting with the tasting room, oh yeah the two tour groups that came through the winery, taste all the fermenting wines, check sugars, get the lab analysis, do the additions that need to be done, and finally clean up all equipment the winery that was abused over the day.
By the end of the day, we've cleaned everything up, talked about tomorrow's chaos, and said goodbye for the night. This is the point I head off to check the two Petite Sirah Vineyards, taste the grapes and take some beautiful sunset pictures in the vineyard. I pull the camera from the car, and realize that the thing is super sticky from this mornings pick. Oh well, I take the pictures anyway. After checking the vineyard, I head off to an account to deliver a case of wine, meet up with the wife, have a glass of wine and some food, and head home.
The Napa Valley Vintners is the non-profit trade association responsible for promoting and protecting the Napa Valley appellation as the premier winegrowing region. From seven founding members in 1944, today the association represents more than 450 Napa Valley wineries and collectively is a leader in the world-wide wine industry.
Thursday, September 17th marked the start of the red grape harvest at Quintessa with about four tons of Silverdale South Merlot. 
to recognize the ritual of the Napa Valley Harvest. Father Brenkle from the St. Helena Catholic Church blessed the grapes and we raised a toast with the entire Quintessa family. As they say, it takes a village...
Harvest at the Quintessa estate officially started last Friday when we picked our Illumination Bench block of Sauvignon Blanc from the Quintessa property. 
I feel like the rabbit out of Alice in Wonderland, the one with the pocket watch running up and down yelling “we’re late, we’re late”, because that’s what we are this year. We usually are harvesting Sauvignon Blanc no later than the first of September, but it looks like the 15th this year. No panic, but I am wasting a lot of energy running up and down the mountain and not picking anything. 
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