Harvest always seems so far away and then all of a sudden it is knocking on the winery door! Here we are in August looking to squeeze in one last bottling run before bringing in the 2024 grapes probably the first week in September. We are excitedly anticipating what this vintage will give us.
Our harvest intern team of 5 women this year will start to arrive in mid-August and then we will get to training and cleaning up the facility to make room for grape processing.
For trials, I will continue to improve on the nutritional program for the yeasts to complete a healthy fermentation. As we continue to get to know Kalita Vineyard, I will be looking to incorporate more whole cluster fermentation in those lots and understand that impact on the Yamhill-Carlton Pinot Noir. This will be our second year working with young Pinot Blanc vines from the new Pedotti Vineyard, and this year I will pick some of this site for our Blanc de Blanc sparkling program. Speaking of sparkling I am looking forward to the arrival of our 1000gal oak oval, or foudre, from France. The long term plan for this is to use it for aging our sparkling base, but this harvest we will be able to do some fermentation in it and see its impact on wine quality. This will be an exciting new tool and as a side benefit will look real pretty in the cellar! And I may have a couple new wines in the hopper and we will see what the vintage gives me to work with!
Cheers,
Robin
