Harvest, Harvest, Harvest

Harvest is moving along. Things are moving remarkably quickly at this point. At this rate we should be done more than two weeks early.

We spent all weekend picking and crushing and after a long Friday night (literally all night) and few technical difficulties we got our new destemming and auger feed equipment dialed in (at least we hope so becasue I have to put in any more 28 hour days I might end up calling immigration on myself for the free ride to Mexico and never come back).

This weekend we picked Syrah and Riesling. On deck for this week is more Syrah, more Riesling, Cab Franc, Merlot and Malbec and maybe even some Cab from a light set hot site. The question of the year is where the hell are we going to put all this fruit? It might be time to clean out the garbage cans and tuperware (is that how you spell that?) and anything else that could possibly hold grapes for fermentation.

Oh yeah, the picture is from sunrise on Saturday morning while STILL crushing.

Harvest Begins (if not perfect)

Yesterday was our first day of harvest. We picked six tons of Chardonnay for ourselves and three tons of Rousanne and three tons of Semillon for other wineries. All in all yesterday went great. However, today was one of those days. Our pick schedule changed 37 times and our new equipment (new to us at least) did not quite work as planned.

The auger feed (which gets the grapes into the destemmer) is a little taller than we would have liked. Matt saved the day with some quick welding and it looks like it should work now (please cross your fingers or knock on wood or whatever else you do for good luck).

We will be picking Syrah and Viognier on Friday and crushing Merlot and Gurty. Sunday is a big pick with Riesling.

There is another video of our first morning on Facebook.

And It Starts...

Harvest is officially upon us. We are picking Chardonnay and Riesling from Copeland and Rousanne, Viognier, the remainder of the Semillion and Syrah from Dineen and have Merlot and Gurty coming from other sites all by Friday. My favorite day of the year is finally here. Harvest!!!

Will keep you posted on how harvest goes as it unfolds. Pictures and videos of harvest to come.

Bottling

Today we bottled our 2007 Merlot, Syrah and Reserve Syrah. Tomorrow we will be finishing up the Cab and Cab Franc. Thank god this is all we have to do until December (bottling=a necessary evil) when we have a very small run to do.

It all went very well thanks to our friends from Cultura Winery, http://www.culturawine.com/. It is really nice to have great friends willing lend a helping hand (especially when they make fantastic wine).

We have posted a video of us bottling on our Faceboook page, http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Two-Mountain-Winery/27945791660?ref=ts, if want to see how we roll.