Cellar Foreman Luis Mora adjusts the basket press packed with grapes for our late harvest Violetta.
The vineyard crew worked hard to finish planting cover crop before the latest round of rains last week. Vice President of Vineyards & Production Ivo Jeramaz reports we’ve already seen about 5 inches of rain with more on the way, making this one of the wettest autumn’s in years.
We’ve enjoyed perfect conditions to start Botrytis cinerea, the beneficial mold that transforms late harvest grapes into Violetta and we’ve made our first pass through the vineyard block to harvest grapes. We’ll need to make several more passes to harvest grapes to pick individual clusters as they become ready.
We’ve also finished picking the second crop, which are grapes that rise laterally out of the original vine and produces smaller berries. The secondary crop typically has higher levels of acid than the main crop due to longer ripening time on the vine and during fermentation. We don’t use the pressed juice from second crop in our wines but sell it off on the bulk wine market.
