I visited Cedar Lane vineyard yesterday and the Sauvignon Blanc we will get from them this year is tasting great, so we will most likely bring some in this week.  Finally—harvest is starting.  I’ve never experienced such a late harvest.  But having a season like this isn’t bad, necessarily, and can be actually quite good.  I’m tasting a lot of fruit out there that is very, very tasty, and amazingly enough, a lot of it seems to be developing great flavor before the sugars accumulate.  The tannins in the skins are developing, stems are lignifying, and the seeds are getting brown, while Brix readings are 21 or 22.  This is wonderful and is shaping up to be a great vintage, in my humble opinion.

And, yes, I’m excited to say that we are starting a Sauvignon Blanc program here this year.  I haven’t made Sauvignon Blanc since I was in New Zealand and I am eager to use some of the techniques I learned there about how to handle Sauvignon Blanc to get the most out of it.  More to come, so stay tuned…....

 I visited Tondre Grapefield in the Santa Lucia Highlands yesterday, as well.   Joe Alarid does a nice job of managing this vineyard, and this year it looks and tastes great.  I walked the rows of Pinot Noir clones 667 and 115 that we will take from that vineyard and it is tasting great, but Brix is still in the low 20’s.  The tannins have already developed in the skins and is no longer gritty or chalky, the seeds are browing, and the stems lignifying.  Although I didn’t test the acid, it seemed that it was still pretty high, so I’m anticipating we will get a nice acidity when we actually do harvest.  If the weather continues the way it has been (cold at night, mild mornings and warm afternoons), then we probably won’t harvest this for at least another 2 weeks. (Sorry I’m short on the pictures today —it is difficult to have dirty fingers, a sticky refractometer, and try to handle a camera and take a decent photo all at the same time.)

I will visit Chula Vina again (probably tomorrow) and will report soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 10:02 am and is filed under Cima Collina, In the Vineyard, Harvest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.