harvest season, it’s a busy busy time of year.

It’s all-hands-on-deck around this time of year, and every single member of our daily crew (and the farm crew) is pitching in to help with the harvest and processing. Everyone has a job, but it’s changing constantly– we go with the flow and roll with the punches.

But, today, I’m focusing on one person. Our winemaker, Anne. What the heck does she do during the harvest? Well, hold your horses, I’m here to tell you!

Welcome to:

a day in the life of a winemaker: harvest edition

lists

This gal, she makes a daily list. How else could she keep track of all the things that need to be done in one day? Surely she couldn’t make that list in her head, because I know for a fact that she has a bunch of numbers and other to-dos running around in there taking up space.

It’s not just lists on this whiteboard, guys. It’s events on our iCloud Calendar, the list above leads to events on the calendar so we know when we are removing bird netting, harvesting, processing. This winemaker keeps us organized. If we look at our calendars 🙂

test the grapes. test the wine.

During the harvest season, Anne (or Amanda) test the progress of the ripening grapes in the vineyard pretty much daily. It’s important to pick the grapes as quickly as possible when the parameters are exactly what Anne needs to make delicious wine– the grapes can change pretty quickly depending on the weather! What is Anne testing for? Well, I’ll tell you:

• pH
• TA (Titratable Acidity: measuring the acidity of the grapes more accurately)
• °Brix (the level of sugar in the grapes)

once the grapes have been processed and are fermenting

Anne tests the fermenting wine daily to monitor the progress. As the yeast eat the sugar and produce alcohol, the wine takes on new aromas and flavors– it’s important to monitor them daily so she can catch anything that is off. When she is checking the fermenting wines, she is taking notes on three factors:

• Temperature (while yeast is fermenting, it causes a temperature increase)
• Aroma
• Flavor

So, yeah, this involves some tasting on Anne’s part…and sometimes we get to help! #perks

racking, tamping, and punching

The first rule of #wineryfightclub is you don’t talk about #wineryfightclub.

 

 

 

Just kidding, guys! These are terms that are used in the winemaking process!

• Racking: Removing the fermenting  wine from one tank to another, clean, tank– leaving behind the lees and what not that have settled to the bottom of the first tank.
• Tamping: Mixing in yeast or wine-fining agents into the wine. Can also be the process of mixing in the skins of the red grapes.
• Punching: Pushing the cap red grape skins into the wine.

During the early times of fermentation, these things happen often, nearly daily. The reds and whites are usually treated differently and this brings in a few other things that Anne could do in a given day during the harvest season:

• Cold-settling: This is the process of putting the white grape juice (not in the fermentation process) into a cooler to allow the lees and particulate to settle to the bottom. This makes the racking process possible.
• Inoculating: For red grape juice, this happens pretty much immediately for most red wines. This is when the specific yeast chosen for that wine is put into the red grape juice.

and then, of course, there’s the manual labor

We are all a part of this process, but the winemaker takes an active role here as well!

• The picking crew must be organized and notified of picking times.
• Our staff must go through and remove the bird netting from the grapes.

Once the grapes are picked, we start the processing of the grapes, this entails:

• Weighing the tonnage of the grapes brought in.
• Scooping the grapes into the hopper of the de-stemmer/crusher machine.
• Pumping the grapes to the press (whites and rosés) or their fermentation vessels (reds)
• Pressing the grapes (whites and rosés)
• Pumping the juice from the press to the fermenting vessels
• Inoculating the juice or putting the tanks into the cooler for cold-settling.
• Cleaning everything and putting it all away until the next harvest and processing day!

and there you have it.

Just one day. This can all happen in one day. But the results, guys. The results are so so worth it. (I mean, have you tasted this stuff?! It’s amazing!)

Until next time! with midbest love,

Meg