From our Chardonnay harvest at Chaine d’Or yesterday.
Grapes coming in in the 30 pound picking bins. I prefer to have the crew sort on the vine and in the field rather than handling the grapes again on a sorting table. This crew did a great job as you can see.
There was a tiny bit (2%) of Botrytis, which should give a little peach and pit fruit note to the finished wine.
Grapes enter the press. Once the press is full, we run it on a gentle 2 hour cycle to press all the juice out and transfer it to a chilled tank to settle. This will separate the solids, or ‘lees’.
For a few years at Chaine d’Or I had the job of lifting the bins into the crusher. This year though I ‘drove’. Making sure that the crusher is working right, running the press and watching after the entire process.
The stems are shooting out of the end of the crusher and the juice and berries are dropping into the press.
We had one MOG emergency. That’s ‘Matter Other than Grapes”. Here a water bottle had been left in a picking bin and gone through the crusher. The bottle shot out the end, here I am watching for the label. I found it and got it out of the must.
And at the end of the day? This is another reason why we had training camp this year. 20 oz bone in Rib Eyes on the grill at the end of a long day.
We’ll be back at the winery today. Finishing clean up and getting the wine into the inside tanks to start fermentation. Once it starts going we’ll transfer the juice into oak barrels to finish fermentation. We should use about 8 barrels total this year. Two new Claude Gillet barrels, two new Sequin Moreau barrels and 4 neutral french oak barrels.