Keeping Up: Harvest
I was getting ready to post John Kane’s third Harvest installment, when I realized I had never posted the second. (Here is the first, if you missed it.)
As of the last week of September, we had received 650 tons of fruit. The fruit that was coming in was looking very clean and evenly ripe. Rare for Zinfandel, which is known for looking like raisins at the bottom of the cluster and perfect at its top. Moving on, barreling down is in full swing. This is the first time we’ll be using puncheon barrels, which hold 500 liters. The 500 l barrels make the wine seem more mature than the normal 220 liter, without adding as much oak influence. They’ll be used for some of the smaller productions.
September also brought a new member to the production staff: the Diemme D80 press, brought over from Italy. Having only one press was quite chancey, as it could give at any moment and bring the whole process to a screeching halt. A great direct quote from John about how it feels with just one press in operation, “When crush is rolling at a fast pace, it feels as if you’re driving on I-80 West at eight in the morning.” For those of you who don’t live in the Bay Area, trust me, that ain’t a good feeling! Now that we have two, it allows the hard-working crew to turn the tanks over that much faster.
Grape Specifics:
–received fruit from the mountain vineyards of Sonoma and Mendocino
–will finish up the week with all the fruit from Contra Costa
–new vineyards in Livermore will be arriving next week
–some new Petite Sirah vineyards coming in that we haven’t worked with before
–the only white grapes received so far are the Preston Marsanne and Rominger Marsanne/Rousanne.
More to follow soon.
Rosenblum Cellars harvest, crush, getting grapes
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