Vintage 2017 – Will it ever begin?

Some of you may remember the rush of vintage 2016.  We started on the 5th of February with our grapes for sparkling wine and were finished by the 17th of March with the Late Harvest Semillon.  This year couldn’t be different.

This morning I was in the vineyard sampling our Chardonnay for the sparkling wine and the Chardonnay for Inara.  By the looks of the analysis we are at least two weeks away from picking both of these.  We will be sampling the Layla and Alena Chardonnay, the Pinot noir and the Pinot gris tomorrow morning.

Sampling the vineyard is a slow job involving lots of walking but it means we can have a good look at the grapes and see how they are progressing.  It also gives us the opportunity to check for any disease, look at general vine health and get an idea of the yield we will have.  Plus it means I get lots of steps up on my fitness tracker and I can justify that 3rd glass of wine in the evening!

Aside from vineyard sampling, we have been very busy getting the winery ready for the upcoming harvest.  We have bought 2 new 5,000 litre tanks and have had the plumber in to connect all our tanks up for refrigeration.  We had to rearrange the winery before doing this and are happy with our new layout.  While it will be a tight fit, we are confident we will be able to efficiently process our grapes.

Now that all our tanks are under cover and hooked up, we have dragged all the processing equipment out and given it a quick clean before setting up our crushing and pressing pad.  We expect to have this all set up by early next week so we can have a dry run through of all machinery to ensure everything is running smoothly.  Then all we have to do it wait for the grapes!

 

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