2023, What are your plans?

[distancerunner]

Cooler climate harvests earlier?

 

[Nebbiolo020]

This is interesting. The reports seem to confirm what you're saying. Yet our vendor tells us the grapes will be on the dock during the last week of September.

Most of the grapes in our order is grown in the Suisun Valley.

Can you and NorCal weigh in?

I think last week of September is possible depending on the varietal.

 

[Nebbiolo020]

Cooler climate harvests earlier?

Later

 

[distancerunner]

That’s what I thought. Thanks.

 

[Hazelemere]

thank you. very helpful

We got excellent large nylon sieves with pull strings from Amazon that we we able to load into our bladder press to reseive this oozy, pulpy Sunshine apple puree from a primary fermenter slightly fermenting i.e. Sg ~1.070 after starting at SG 1.089. The wasps loved it We must have killed 30 and one stung me near my elbow which I soaked in propylene glycol to extract the venom right after the sting. This is now all in glass carboys and will be racked and bentoniteed to remove protein when the SG gets to 1.030-1.040 probably in about 6 days.

We also ground all of my russets, cox and a few pears and pressed the mix to get SG 1.047 which I chaptalized with cane sugar to SG 1.083. This must is tangy and super fragrant with a really nice flavour and surprisingly moderate tannin for russets. I'm tempted to blend some of it with my son in law's Sunshine-Spartan apple mix and the rest with second run Siegerrebe from my vineyard (1st run sediment with press skins on pectic enzyme with about 20 ppm sulphite for 48 hours before repressing to make a Russet Siegerrebe which I've never made. I have a bumper crop of excellent Siegerrebe that are ~SG 1.090 ~21.5-22 brix that smell good but need acid and will be picked and pressed between Saturday and Monday this week depending on any rain forecast. The Russets will absolutely give them that. We are fermenting our 2 apple wines and 1 cyser with 71B yeast to maximize fruitiness in the smell.

 

[Hazelemere]

https://www.amazon.ca/MAIYUE-Reusab...-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

 

[NorCal]

Cooler climate harvests earlier?

later. Suisun is closer to the coast, I’m further inland. Starting to hear local vineyards talking about grapes coming off next week and the following two weeks. My front yard cab sauv is at 23 brix, so looking at next weekend.

 

[Nebbiolo020]

later. Suisun is closer to the coast, I’m further inland. Starting to hear local vineyards talking about grapes coming off next week and the following two weeks. My front yard cab sauv is at 23 brix, so looking at next weekend.

Dang that’s a bit earlier than I would have expected for cab, ours is not coming in till October

 

[NorCal]

Dang that’s a bit earlier than I would have expected for cab, ours is not coming in till October

I’m getting cab out of Amador and it too will probably be early Oct.

 

[Nebbiolo020]

I’m getting cab out of Amador and it too will probably be early Oct.

The harvest date for cab was end of September in 2021 we had picked everything else by then so the fact that everything is this late this year is a bit crazy 2022 was awful nobody really got any decent fruit yields were down and a lot of wineries skipped 2022 as a whole

 

[CDrew]

Plans are coming into focus. Picking Syrah (400 pounds goal) on Wednesday 6 am, followed by a small amount of Grenache (150 pounds goal) for Rose. Then Saturday, picking Zinfandel/Primitivo (300 pound goal). Will likely have some Barbera near the end of the harvest season in October. It's looking good. I'm still failing on the white grapes!

 

[crushday]

@CDrew Glad you're around!!

 

[NorCal]

Plans are coming into focus. Picking Syrah (400 pounds goal) on Wednesday 6 am, followed by a small amount of Grenache (150 pounds goal) for Rose. Then Saturday, picking Zinfandel/Primitivo (300 pound goal). Will likely have some Barbera near the end of the harvest season in October. It's looking good. I'm still failing on the white grapes!

Go for the juice! I’m picking up a Chardonnay juice out of Lodi in a few weeks. It made the best white I’ve ever made. PM me or give me a call if you want me to pick some up for you.

 

[mainshipfred]

Took a while but I finally committed. 6 lugs Cab Sauv, 5 Zin and 4 PS plus 2 juice buckets of Sauv Blanc and one White Zin from California. For local I'm shooting for 300 lbs of Tannat and 200 lbs PV. I usually get my Cab Sauv grapes from S. Africa since I've never been disappointed. It doesn't do well in Virginia so Cali will be a new experience.

 

[distancerunner]

Took a while but I finally committed. 6 lugs Cab Sauv, 5 Zin and 4 PS plus 2 juice buckets of Sauv Blanc and one White Zin from California. For local I'm shooting for 300 lbs of Tannat and 200 lbs PV. I usually get my Cab Sauv grapes from S. Africa since I've never been disappointed. It doesn't do well in Virginia so Cali will be a new experience.

Who is your supplier for California grapes?

 

[mainshipfred]

It's our local group WashingtonWinemakers

 

[Cynewulf]

It's our local group WashingtonWinemakers

Not sure if this was part of the question, but Washington Winemakers orders grapes from Delta Packing: Grapes Overview — Delta Fresh.

 

[NorCal]

Another change of plans.
- 60 gallon barrel of Amador Cabernet Sauvignon, with a splash of Petit Verdot
- 60 gallon barrel of Lodi Chardonnay (Viognier not available this year)
- 60 gallon estate Syrah 65%/Zin 35% field blend
- 20 gallon estate Zin

I got so much more fruit from the vineyard than I expected...completely blown away as the fruit came off the vines by the bucket load. Instead of the expected 30 gallons from my vineyard, I will be getting 80! If you look close at the fruit in the bucket, you can see a stem with powdery mildew that I have been fighting in the vineyard.

Yet another change. The fruit from my vineyard came in so much more than I expected that I would not have the vessels to put the wine, nor a place to store it if I didn't cancel my plans on the Amador Cab Sauv. Fortunately the vineyard owner is understanding and they do well over 50 tons, so my one bin is a rounding error for them.

- 60 gallon estate barrel Syrah (67%) / Zin (33%) DONE
- 50 gallon estate Zin (90%) / Syrah (10%) DONE will re-home 30 gallons of this
- 30 gallon estate Cabernet Sauvignon DONE
- 60 gallon barrel of Lodi Chardonnay next week

 

[BarrelMonkey]

Today marks the end of 2023 primary fermentation for me, so time to revisit my goals and plans:

3-5 gal Elderflower wine, still and sparkling. Hoping to learn from my experience last year, when I made 2 small batches of elderflower 'shampagne' - neither of which was really great. But in each case I know what I did wrong...

I made 3 gallons of still elderflower and 3 gallons of pet-nat style sparkling. The still wine is rather bitter so I didn't bottle it, I think I left the flowers steeping for too long. The sparkling isn't perfect - some of those same bitter notes - but nice enough that I am enjoying it. I'll finally have it down next year, I'm sure!

3-5 gal Elderberry wine. It's hard to tell this early but I think my 2022 iteration was an improvement over 2021. Planning to significantly increase fruit per gallon next time. If I have enough fruit, I may try to do separate batches from my European and American cultivars.

Today I racked 7 gallons of elderberry out of primary. My blend was ~3/4 European, 1/4 American elderberry cultivars. So far it's tasting promising.

30-60 gal barrel fermented Chardonnay. Hoping to join with one or two others to process 1-1.5T fruit.

Nope - our plans for acquiring fruit fell through, plus other life/work events got in the way

30 gal (1/4T) of something red, probably not Pinot noir since I have a lot of my 2021 pinot in the cellar. It depends what's available, could be Syrah, Merlot, Zinfandel... we'll see.

I ended up with 1/3T syrah, currently in barrel (~30 gal), keg (~15 gal) and carboy/jug (~4 gal). ML bacteria pitched 10 days ago but no real sounds of activity except maybe a tiny bit in the barrel... Trying to be patient!

 

[sour_grapes]

I JUST got believable intel that our grapes (for the Milwaukee-area vintner's group, WVA) will be arriving. Our pont of contact says:

Stats from the field are, brix, 23.2 and pH 3.6 so our gamble to let them hang a little longer paid off. If you read any vintage news, you learn that an unusual phenomenon is taking place all down the West Coast with late ripening of grapes of almost every variety. In August it was reported that wineries should be ready because "everything is 2-3 weeks early," then it stopped or slowed rapidly. I'm glad to be getting grapes, even if what we expected didn't happen, early ripening and delivery.

I'm not sure about all the details, but I am happy that it looks like we are a go!