I have a new video for you all. This is a little video that describes how we go about tasting the grapes to decide whether or not they’re almost ready to harvest. You all know how to taste things, so it’s a little basic. However, sometimes, it’s fun to hear about the specifics like … what exactly does tasting the seed show about acidity and maturity or … how do you go about randomly picking grapes for a 200 berry sample that you’ll bring to the lab.

Yes, these and far nerdier questions will be answered.

Tasting Merlot before Harvest

Pre-emptive Q & A:

Q: Ryan, isn’t it a little late in the year to be checking your grapes’ maturity? I thought that the Cabardes would have harvested most of its Merlot by now.
A: You are such a precocious reader! Yes, it’s true that this is late. I filmed this in September and then got too busy actually harvesting to edit the video (also, I had to debug it because iMovie HD was giving me some trouble).

Q: How about a harvest update?
A: Harvest is going well. The Merlot and Syrah are in and they’re fermenting. We just started punching down caps today on two of the vats and it’s as hard as I remember. There’s a new harvester that is amazing so our quality will go up even though we are harvesting a little less by hand this year. That’s awesome, because it means less stress for me and better wine for all of us. 🙂