We lingered over coffee and the newspaper, then just before 8 Paul fetched the little trailer from Uhaul while I took the nets off the “estate” mourvedre vineyard. We harvested the house and church and met up with Millie in Los Altos.
She went up with 10 bins to get started and was almost done by the time we arrived.
In all we brought in 840 pounds of fruit from the three vineyards. We were undecided about processing until we finished the pick. Rather than run everything thru the crusher we decided to leave all the fruit whole and foot treaded instead. The fruit was sweet and sexy and the skins this year are very richly tannic. There are always a bunch of clusters of syrah in the back yard vineyard that raisin so I toss them in to off-set some of the green stems you see in the header photo.
This was my first real harvest from home and I was more than a little excited about taking the fruit off. The yield was still really light, just 120 pounds, but I only have about 1/2 the vineyard fruiting right now. The rows under the magnolia tree are competing for resources; water and sunshine. I’ll do another round of fertilizer treatment this fall and next spring. I have been a water miser but will be a little more generous in 2013 to give them a little boost.
Just take the picture already, this is only the first bucket! I dropped acid at the winery, thusly such the holes in my Def Leppard shirt – my official cruddy winery/work shirt since the acid incident. (Lab chemicals, I don’t actually drop acid recreationally, my imagination needs no help thankyouverymuch).
Syrah grapes from the back yard vineyard next to the Hot Tub.
Bubby is Paul’s official supervisor. He was very curious to know what we were doing with “his” grapes.
Quickie pic of Paul and the two rows of cabernet at the church.
And below: the syrah at Harrison’s vineyard in Los Altos Hills.
