The end is near. Well the end of this harvest anyway.  I has been the earliest harvest I have ever experienced.  It has also been a very strange one with the rain during flowering, drought, earthquake, hail, more rain, heat, and this week even more rain which should put a cap on a very eventful harvest.  We received our last Chardonnay on last Friday.  We will receive our last fruit of the season this coming Friday making the earliest harvest I have ever experienced also the earliest ending harvest I have ever experienced.

Some of our earliest Pinot Noir picks are finished with ML and being SO2ed this week.  Among them is a very special lot of wine which I am still amazed that I had a hand in.  The fruit was from one of our Pinot Noir Reserve growers.  It was a earlier pick than the winery would traditionally have gone for however it is something for Pinot that I believe is important.  We hand harvested it at 24 Brix then allowed it to ferment using the yeasts coming in with the fruit in an open top fermenter.  The resulting wine is beautiful.  Every now and then as a winemaker you stand back and realize that you’ve helped create something truly special and Genevieve and I both feel that this tiny lot, only 350 gallons, is special even amongst our other Reserve lots which are pretty incredible if you look at their qualities independently.  We may be bottling it separately to make sure that it can be enjoyed by more than just us but only time will tell.  It’s been an amazing year for Pinot Noir and I’ve been fortunate to have been a part of it.

This will conclude my weekly harvest coverage.  Usually I go all the way through to week 14 but this year just doesn’t warrant it.  Next Monday I will be back to my usual blog topics.  Once again, if there are any interesting winemaking topics that anyone wants more information on feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what you want to read about.