Fall 2007

After a week of steady picking that culminated with a frantic push on September’s last Saturday, we have two thirds of our Pinot Noir and all of our Chardonnay ‘in the barn.’ 25 tons of Pinot and 10 tons of Chardonnay came into the winery on Saturday alone, the product of hard work from our harvest crew and over 100 stellar vineyard workers. The early ripening nature of our vineyard site really worked to our advantage, allowing for mature fruit at a relatively early date.

After the arrival of the first autumn rains, we’ve been concentrating on what has already come in, cold soaking individual blocks of Pinot, beginning the barrel fermentations on our lots of Chardonnay and pressing off our first fermentation of 2007, the 777 Pinot planted in 2000.

It appears that we’ll bring in a small amount of fruit this Saturday while waiting for a break in the weather before attacking the remaining high elevation plantings. It’s definitely shaping up to be a chilly, damp harvest but we’re hopeful that we’ll see one more window of October sunshine.

Cheers!
Melissa