Vintage (crush) has reached the halfway point here in my little world.
Everything else is scheduled to come in over the next week or so, weather and transportation permitting.
Our growers who still have crop hanging are a pretty miserable lot: complaining about the birds and the loss of tonnage.
So far the star in the cellar is the 05 Chard crop which has all the right attributes at this time to be a real kick in the pants.
I'm still looking for the Cabs and some slow whites.
Frankly, we didn't get the kind of autumn I was hoping for back in August. Nothing extreme but no real sunshine party either.
Time to jam my breakfast down, put up a take away coffee and walk down through the vines to the winery to start punching the 23 red fermenters currently on the go. I'll take my AM Brix and temps as I go and formulate a plan for the day based partly on those numbers. I already know we'll be crushing about 4 tons of Sem and I'll probably want to press the first of the Merlot fermenters. Trouble child of the day: custom crush Gew that came in at 25.5 Brix and only 5.5 TA. Must intervene so save patient.
Today's shoppping list:
another hose gun
beer
Perlite
red dry erase marker
more beer
Starting a winery called BLACK CLOUD in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. The ups, the downs and the everyday experiences as we build our dream.
