Getting ready…

After the manicure.

There’s a certain combination of excitement and anxiety that comes in August. As we are in the home stretch to starting the harvests, we’re excited for what harvest will bring but anxious for how the fruit will turn out. It’s also a lot of work.

Most of the time is spent touching up the vineyard floor with the weed whacker. It sounds simple but five to six hours in the heat and dust while standing on a side slope does impart a certain “feeling” to the lower back and legs that I would be fine doing without. “Can’t you just run the tractor to do all that?” Yes and no. While the tractor would mow the middle of the vineyard rows quite well, at this time of year I prefer keeping the dust down (off of the fruit) as we approach harvest. Also, careful dressing of weeds around the trunks of the vines provides a nice clean look that satisfies the soul.

Next will be cleaning harvest lugs, macro bins, and preparing harvesting tools as they have been sitting for nearly a year.

Late August and early September brings a new routine to the mornings on the Farm. For the next six to eight weeks we will take random and dispersed samples of fruit from the various blocks to measure the sugar content in the grapes. The samples are taken in the cool of the early morning since the sugar content of a grape can vary throughout the day depending on temperature and other factors. The sugar content, along with taste, pip color, and other factors help guide us toward the optimal time to harvest. (that’s not a typo… grape seeds are commonly referred to as pips, not pits.)

The white wine grapes (Sauvignon Blanc and Albariño) will be first to harvest. Yesterday morning, coffee in hand, samples were taken from the vineyard and the Sauvignon Blan is reading 22.4 brix and the Albariño is at 18.6. We’ll see how the heat is over the next week. We’re anticipating a harvest in about two weeks, but time will tell. Yikes, so much to do!