Another Day in Paradise

Dawn starts overcast but soon clears as another beautiful fall day begins in the Northern Willamette Valley – it’s time, again, to harvest more fruit from our estate vineyard on Parrett Mountain. Today, Saturday October 11, we are picking Chardonnay and a small “Mother Block” of Pinot Noir.

The Chardonnay, Dijon 76 clone, looks beautiful in the morning light.

Evan and Paco load almost perfect fruit into the bins. Very little sorting will be required for this fruit.

Next, we turn our attention to the “Mother Block”. This is a small block of Dijon 115 Pinot Noir originally planted in 1996. These vines are own rooted and non-irrigated.

An absolutely perfect day, warm and sunny.

We all smile as we see how gorgeous the Pinot looks – not much sorting needed on this fruit either!

We’ve still got lot’s more fruit to harvest, let’s hope the weather continues to cooperate. More to follow.

Pinot Noir Harvest – October 1, 2008

The crews arrive around 11AM and commence the pick.

Pinot Noir grapes are hand picked.

The buckets are staged at the ends of the rows.

Picked fruit

The fruit is then loaded into harvest bins for transport to the winery.

Loading the harvest bins

The harvest bins are ready for loading up.

Beautiful, ripe Pinot Noir, Pommard clone

And finally, off to the winery they go.

Staged bins

All in all, Tucker (Director of Homeland Security) thinks the day went rather well!

Tucker, the dog

The Pinot Noir harvest is in!

Pinot Noir

October 1, 2008.

The weather has taken a turn for the worse, predictions are for 4 days of rain with a probable accumulation of 2″ or more. On Wednesday, October 1 we decided to harvest the Pinot Noir.

The fruit looks superb. ETS lab results report brix at 23.6 degrees, with a TA of .78g/100ml and a pH of 3.23. Not quite the numbers we’ve seen in the past few vintages (excluding a very wet 2007, of course) but very promising none the less.

Although I was filled with anxiety (what if it does’nt rain and it could hang a few more days!), Buddy Beck, owner of Advanced Vineyard Systems, our vineyard management company reminded me that it’s been a strange year (slow, cold spring) and that I am lucky indeed to have fruit at this level of maturity.

We walked the vineyard prior to harvest, the grapes are softening, the seeds are brown and nutty in flavor, the flesh has all but dissolved. Physiologically, the grapes have matured and are ready to pick. Pick we shall!