Harvest - live and in color

I have received many comments about my harvest post. It really is an intense period of time for winemakers and our recent heat wave has not helped. Once the fruit is harvested at the vineyard, it is trucked to the processing facility where it is hand sorted, crushed, pressed and stored for its fermentation. All this is under the careful eye of the winemaker who applies years of experience in determining how best to handle the fruit. We are talking about TONS of fruit, literally... and we are just a small boutique winery. It changes dramatically for the big wineries but this process is crucial to the end product. If you could witness how intense this is, you would have a new appreciation for what is poured in your wine glass every night.

The first critical step takes place in the vineyard. We are blessed to have access to outstanding fruit from some of the top growers on the west side of Paso Robles. To give a sense of what it feels like to be up at the crack of dawn, riding the rails of the crawler through the vines and removing anything that is not a grape please view the video that hopefully is attached to this blog post. If I am not successful at attaching it, I will try the You Tube method and send the link from the blog sight.

Once the fruit reaches the winery, it goes through a second hand sorting where the berries are examined. Any unripe or overly raisined grapes are discarded. This is a messy job where one stands along side a vibrating conveyor belt, with hands caressing the cold fruit and earwigs (bugs) climbing up your arms, back and neck. I did not capture this to video, I was way too sticky!

We are about half way through harvest with the rest of the fruit coming in over the next week or so. Wish us luck!