It's harvest time

I got the call today that I have been waiting a couple of weeks to get.  Harvest time is finally here!  This year I am getting Pinot Noir grapes (again) from the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Since I am a small home winemaker, I don't really have a say in what grapes I get.  When a winery schedules a pick date with the vineyard, that is the day I am (hopefully) getting some grapes.  It's perfectly fine by me.  I am super thankful to be getting anything in such small quantities, since its a pain in the ass for a grower to deal with just a few hundred pounds.  Plus I really would have no clue about being able to decide what day to pick.

This will be my 4th harvest in my garage winery. In 2009, my first attempt I made a Livermore Cabernet/Cab Franc blends that was just awful. Looking back at my notes, the peak fermentation temp only got up to 74 degrees, no where close to what you need to extract all of the goodness from the grapes. I fixed that issue by buying a stainless steel fermentation tank to be able to put all of the grapes in one fermenter. This increases the mass in the fermenter, thus increasing the potential temperature.  I learned trying to ferment in food grade bins in small quantities doesn't work.

Another big thing I learned was not doing a good job of letting all of the sediment settle out.  Some of the bottles were more like a motor oil than wine.  I've since figured out a better process and I have it down to a science now.  I don't belive in filtering or fining, so I need to rely on gravity.

In 2010, I was REALLY lucky to get Syrah from a high end vineyard in Carneros called Las Madres Vineyard. I experimented with and used more than 50% whole clusters in the fermentation.  I'm pretty excited about this wine, I think it has some potential.  My only worry is it seems to have a very high acidity level and I don't think I got enough sulfite in at bottling. I need to send it out for some lab work.

In 2011 I was again VERY lucky to get some Pinot from Belle Farms in Santa Cruz Mountains, from the vineyard at their home. Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot is hard to get, since there isn't a lot of it and its becoming more and more the epicenter for potentially great Pinot Noir in California.

I'm also pretty excited about that 2011 Pinot.  My only worry is that I left it in the new Hungarian oak barrel too long and the wine will taste too much like a 2 x 4 piece of wood.  Fingers crossed.

Oh, yeah, you might be wondering how I leaned all of this.  In 2008 I was again blessed and fortunate to meet an incredibly kind and generous person, named Ed Kurtzman.  Ed has been making wine for decades and currently runs August West, Roar, Freeman and Sandler wineries.  That year I had a two month sabbatical from Clif Bar and Ed was kind enough to let me volunteer and work the harvest for/with him.  I was also super lucky to spend a week up at Outpost Winery with two of the biggest names up in Napa, Thomas Rivers Brown and Mike Smith.

My plan is to do my best to document the process here in this blog.  Should be fun.  I can't wait to find out what vineyard the grapes are coming from.

I hope it inspires someone out there to give it a try in their garage.