Wow! Those are beautiful!
Not an easy choice. What is the shelf life of your previous rose? THAT is a telling factor, along with the fact that if you make too much this year, it will impact next year's plans. We're always making wine for the future, right?
250-300 pounds. I would try to make the cluster decision at pick, before it went into the bucket. Electric destemmer.
I can appreciate that level of separation. I may make another pass through the vineyard and drop any clusters that I see with mildew, but I’d be fooling myself if I think I’ll get it all.
I talked to the person that is running the 20 acre vineyard I used to manage and they too had to take extra steps to combat mildew this year.
I know I don't have the perspective you do on the quality of grapes, but here in Michigan, every other lug of California grapes we get has some clusters with rot or mildew. I've been forced to make some hard decisions in the past and I had to forego the convenience of throwing all the grapes in the electric destemming machine, and sort by hand. I had a group of friends come and help sort the grapes, so I could put the better looking clusters into the red wine bin and have the not-so-good ones destemmed by hand to remove the bad/rotten/moldy/mildewed berries and save what was still usable for a rose, along with the signee from the big red. I've seen pictures you've posted in the past and I remember seeing lots of people helping you out, so why not ask them for help again and do a very through sorting of the grapes at harvest time, so you can make both, a good red wine and a rose from your grapes...
