Tuesday 11 October 2011

Our Very First Harvest (Part Two)

Family and friends at the vineyard

Family and friends gathered on Sunday to pick the Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier which will be used to make a still rosé wine. After a day of picking the Chardonnay and Seyval on Friday, we had a better idea of how long the process would take so we drafted in a few more friends to help out. Overall 22 enthusiastic pickers had arrived by 9.30am.

The day went pretty well without a hitch, other than a couple of nearly pruned fingers! We finished at about 4.30pm (after another longish lunch) and delivered about a tonne of fruit to Ulrich at Vivid Wines at about 6.30pm. Ulrich declared the quality of the grapes to be "fantastic", although the Millerandage (Hen and Chicken) meant that there was a higher proportion of stalk to berry than normal. Because of this he decided to whole bunch press to minimise the tannins extracted from the stalks.




We now have about 625 litres of excellent quality, organic, salmon coloured must with a potential alcohol of 10.8% and acidity of 10.3.

Freshly pressed Pinot Noir/Meunier

Overall the harvest has been a great success. Whilst we picked far less fruit than we had hoped for, we none the less have produced some excellent quality fruit which will hopefully enable us to start our marketing activities next year.


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