September 21. Starting at 6am, 15 pickers arrived from Vinifera. We picked the first 7 rows of our Clone 459 (“A-Block”) that was re-grafted in May 2014. In total it was 220 vines. (They gave pretty much a full harvest of excellent quality less than 18 months after re-graft.) We also picked 2 parts of our “O-Block” this day. We instructed the pickers to be extra vigilant, throw away any bunches that are not up to par, cut away if there are some berries that are not perfect and of course no leaves or sticks.

Kajsa and I sat at one bin each and sorted further the whole time they were picking.

By 11am we finished picking for the day, and were on to processing at the winery.  We had then 2 Bins of Clone 459-1150lb of fruit put into one fermentation vessel with 55% stem inclusion, the remainder de-stemmed, whole berries. Of O-Block we had 2,200 lb in each of 2 fermentation vessels with 50% whole clusters. Dry ice was then placed on top twice a day while the fruit was left to sit for 5 days for cold fermentation.

We used entirely wild fermentation, which started after 5 days when we warmed up the vessels a bit and added juice from 2 carboys we kept at home on the patio to get the fermentation going.