Harvest Day

Harvest day is a labor intensive day, reaping the bounty of a season's hard work of tending, pruning, and trellising the vineyard. The rain has come and gone and our friend Beau has arrived. The guys headed to Borgo Pass Vineyards early this morning after grabbing some breakfast and 10 lbs of dry ice.

In our opinion, Borgo Pass did a beautiful job of tending the vineyard. Grape clusters are occasionally dropped or thinned throughout the growth cycle to prevent overgrowth and increase the flavor concentration of the grapes. The methods involved in this are an art in and of itself, affecting the outcome of the wine. Without all this attention, I'm sure you'd have a monster of a vineyard... much like our tomato garden.

The guys were assigned two rows on the vineyard by Mark, the vineyard manager, and they went to filling three large buckets of the ripe pinot noir grapes.

 
After the 230 lbs of grapes were picked, they went through the destemmer-crusher to do the obvious - destem and crush - and were collected in a food grade rubber maid brute.

Dave then weighed and added Potassium MetabiSulfite (KMBS), which is an additive to prevent oxidation and microbial growth of wild microorganisms.  Then, he added pectinase which is an enzyme that breaks down pectin to prevent haziness in the wine. Some people say to wait 12 hours after adding the pectinase to add the KMBS, but others choose to add them at the same time to reduce the risk of the juice going bad during those 12 hours. They chose the latter.

After we drove these bad boys home (the buckets, not the guys), we did a cold soak. Adding dry ice drops the temperature of the grapes to stall fermentation from starting and allow a longer time for the crushed grapes to soak and extract more color and flavor from the skins.

Cold soaks are typically within the 55-60 degree Fahrenheit range. After the cold soak (either tomorrow night or Tuesday morning), they'll add a pinot noir specific yeast to begin fermentation.

Here are their supplies for today. Sanitizer, sponges, scale, refractometer, kimwipes, distilled water... The final brix from today's picking was 24. Ideal.

Dave and Beau looked pretty exhausted at this point and in need of a shower, but the cold soak temperature was at 65 degrees. If left at that temperature, wild fermentation would have begun by the natural yeast already present in the grapes. So, they went to get more dry ice. "We don't dictate what we do - the grapes do," they said as they drove away.

We ended the day with a harvest day pot roast courtesy of Ree Drummond and turned in early for the night. Today was just a mini glimpse of what harvest is like at a winery. Two measly rows of grapes. It's mind boggling to think of the attention and manpower required to manage a multi-grape growing vineyard.