Our sparkling wine grapes are halfway picked at this point, and all is well. For farmers like us harvest marks the end of the season and it’s a time to celebrate. So far with a little over half the vineyard done we have 49 tons already picked and delivered to Gloria Ferrer.
Comparable to last year’s harvest
Last year, a record year for grapes, we were able to harvest ~92 tons. Craig (the pater familias) thinks we’ll come pretty close to matching that figure (he’s guessing 85 tons). I’m guessing it will be even closer, though some of the 4×5 rows on the hillside look as though they’ve been farmed for still wine rather than sparkling. Either way, Gloria Ferrer will graciously buy every bunch we can send their way.
For wineries the work has just begun. For small estate wineries, which we will someday be, the work never ends. But for everyone this is a magical time of year. It makes you giddy.
Case in point: John Jordan from Jordan Winery just sent me this fantastic article to start the day:
With a headline like that you can bet there was some alcohol involved. And it probably wasn’t wine.
[...] Bumper Crop! 111 ton is 30% over what the pessimistic pater familias predicted and 20% over last year’s record harvest. Talking with Jenaro it seems that the reason for the huge surge in crop size is that we lost very little to mildew this year and some of the poorer performing vines on the Northern slope pushed out nice sized crops. [...]