Sunday October 2 - Harvest Begins

We started to harvest this morning.  8 men from our venerable picking resource Servin Lopez vineyard management started before daybreak. Our goal today is to pick 5 tons of Merlot.  At 8 AM the grapes begin arriving from the field and we start the sorting operation.

As the grapes arrive they are sorted first in a general sort to remove leaves and bad clusters and then in a very detailed sort where we sort every single grape.  All of the grapes are picked in the little yellow bins you see above and below. Each bin is weighed and the weight recorded.  By the time the day is over we will pick 5.3 tons of grapes. 327 Boxes! 

36 Pounds 14 Ounces.  This one box will make 12 bottles of wine.

As we begin the "crush" we "christen" the first load of grapes with a bottle of our very first wine made from our own vineyard.  A bottle of 2006 Scherzo Cabernet Rosato.

Peter and Patricia celebrate the commencement of the Harvest.

The first step is to take the grapes of the stems. Destemming. The photo below shows how clean the stems are when the come out of the Destemmer.

Grape Stems in a bin as they fall from the destemmer.

As the grapes come out of the destemmer, they fall on to a "shaker table" where the sorting crew gets out every piece of stem and every bad berry.  What an amazing crew we had today.  They did a magnificent job. Thanks ladies!  See the Video below to see how they work.

Watch our amazing sorting crew.

Patricia Kitchak, who usually mans the last spot on the line was busy planning our upcoming harvest party so she was unable to participate.



The tank is cooled to freezing before the gapes are loaded in.  We are doing a "cold soak" where the grapes will sit quietly in their juice and soak for a few days before we warm the mixture up and start the fermentation.

 Ice Crystals on the wine tank.

The patterns in the ice crystals are always beautiful and serve as a harbinger of the entire artistic process of making the wine.

220 V Power for almost everything

If the number of plugs for the equipment we are using is any indication, this is going to be a "powerful wine."

The grapes are then gently elevated into the tank - no pumping.

So as they say, "The grapes are in the tank" but the day is not over.  We finished the sorting at about 5PM and we still have 4 hours of clean-up so we can start all over again in the next couple of days. Each piece of machinery, the destemmer, the sorting tables, the elevators and everything else will be spotless and sterilized before we hit the hay. A big day for us, but a real reward after a long season in the vineyard.