Plentiful friends who came out for our October 14th harvest, and our one niño Hudson who is still at home, made quick work of harvesting 885 lbs of grapes. That’s about a 25% increase from 2022’s harvest of 692 lbs. And with some Mourvèdre we purchased with our wine makers, Bill and Greg, should give us our own barrel of GSM. The increase of yield this year is partially due to all that great rain we received in the spring. But then the cold weather came in, created some shatter in the vineyard and we were not entirely sure how that would impact the yield.
A cool summer is mostly responsible for why we are harvesting a full month after last year. I have a photo from Aug. 9th showing the grapes were still green with no sign of veraison. We didn’t net until Sept. 9th which was the same time we were harvesting last year. Probably should have netted sooner as we did have some pest damage -birds in the back Syrah grapes and yellow jackets in the middle Grenache rows. I think that’s a reminder to trap yellow jackets, and to net sooner. No reason not to.
It was perfect weather with cloud cover and the eclipsed timed perfectly with the morning harvest. Thank you to our golfing buddies who pushed back the tee time AND also helped with harvest, the Dathes, Caseys and Ryners, and to repeat pickers from last year Orsi and Ivan, Page and Bill, Linda D. and Shane Watters, Hudson’s buddy, who along with Hudson got out of bed on a Saturday morning to help. Also a shout out to Diann and June, new first time harvesters. All the photos from the harvest are posted in the 2023 gallery.
The Crew
cinco niños 
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