My Harvest is Over

Well my time at Sonoma Cutrer has come to an end. After 125 tons of grapes, countless punch downs, 20 some tanks of wine processed, a lot of long days, but most of all a lot of fun and a great learning experience. What an adventure.

Amy and I will take a little time to see a few things and hit the road back to Nebraska. It is quite tough to leave as I have had a great time, the area is gorgeous, and the weather is even better. I am not looking forward to winter being right around the corner.

When we return we have a winery facility to get built. That will be the next adventure and more stories to tell - the blog will continue!

Pressing & Barreling Down

The last few days have been a mix of pressing tanks and barreling down the juice from those presses the following day (This give them a night to settle). I have included some pics of the post pressing emptying of the press. The pressed grape skins remain in the press basket. The basket is removed from the press and the inside of the basket is hoisted high with a fork lift, the basket is opened, and the remnants are dumped over 4 macro bins.

More of the Same

Nothing exciting to report from today. We barreled down 28 more barrels and we emptied out 2 more tanks - I only had to shovel one of them - the early one when it was 50 degrees and not the one when the temp reached about 95. Lucky me.

The big news of the day is my sweetie Amy is flying in to join me for a week before we head back home in a week. It will be good to have some company!

Barreling Down

Today was a big day as we barreled down 2 tanks into 28 barrels - I have attached a couple of pictures which show our barrel washer. You can put 2 barrels on it at a time and it takes about 2 minutes to clean the barrels. Then they are ready to fill.

Along with the barrel downs we also drained and pressed 2 tanks - I was "fortunate" enough to shovel out both tanks - and on my birthday - quite the present! The first tank was ok as when I did that one it was 7am and about 48 degrees. Contrast that with the second one at 1:15pm and about 90 degrees. PHEW! Nothing like shoveling 5 tons of grape pumice at that temp.

First day without fruit

Our first day without fruit and there was still plenty to do. We had our twice daily punch downs - those seem to be never ending! Then today we did a barrel down of a tank that had been pressed yesterday into 14 barrels plus we drained a tank that had completed fermentation to the press basket and pressed off the skins. This gets any remaining juice from the skins and allows the juice to settle.

As mentioned in a previous post one of the fun activities after draining a tank is to shovel out the skins from the tank to get ready for pressing. Here you can see some "action" shots of me shoveling out the tank. Plus you see inside the man way door before the clean out and after I shoveled it out. Finally you can see the press basket after it was filled and just prior to putting it in the press

Look like fun?

The Last Grapes

Today we processed our last 10 tons of grapes - that makes a total of 125 tons of grapes processed (120 of them in the last 2 weeks). After the grapes were in the tanks we began the process of cleaning up the sorting line and crusher destemmer. We took down the canopy over the line and got a good cleaning in.

Now tomorrow we will continue to do some barrel downs and empty some tanks. The good news is that the days may be shortening up a bit as we only put in about 10 hours today and hopefully the rest of the week it may get even less as the pressure is off.

A day off with the Peanuts Gang

It was great to have a day off. No grapes to sort, no punch downs, no tanks to empty. So what did I do I went to a couple of wineries, as a customer and sampled some wines and enjoyed some great weather - almost 90 degrees today. I like to consider the trips to the wineries as research as I am trying to see what ideas I can get for our venture back home. So it's strictly a business trip!

I also visited the Charles Schulz museum in Santa Rosa. He is the creator of the comic strip Peanuts. What most people that know me don't know is that as a kid I loved Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the gang. In fact I will still watch A Charlie Brown Christmas during the holidays. So this was a fun time. A lot of comic strips and memories.

Well its back to work tomorrow for the final 10 tons of grapes.