Yeah, that slow start to the 2018 harvest? That's history.

I walked into our lab today and Chelsea turned to me and said, "so, do you remember last week when I said I was bored"?  Yeah, not so much any more.  As often happens, even in years like this one that start slowly, there comes a day where you realize that everywhere you look you see grapes.  This year, today was that day.

What did I see?  Grenache, waiting in bins to be direct pressed for the Patelin de Tablas Rosé. Marsanne, waiting on the crushpad (there was more in the cellar) for the press to open up.  Our first Syrah arriving for the Patelin de Tablas red.  And that wasn't all.  We began the day with a night pick of the last of the Pinot Noir from my parent's house, and finished, 29 tons later, with eight bins of Viognier off our oldest block.

Those 29.68 tons, on top of twenty-eight tons yesterday and sixteen more on Tuesday, put us just over 77 tons for the week.  Yes, that's a lot of grapes, and there's more to come tomorrow, Saturday, and likely Sunday as well.  All told, we'll top 100 tons this week, which will make it one of our busiest weeks of the harvest.  Last year (our largest harvest ever at 642 tons, in 9 weeks) we saw three weeks top 100 tons, with the busiest tallying 126 tons.  We'll likely challenge that this week.

Happily, the fruit looks great, and the conditions are absolutely perfect. Today topped out at 83°F here, while last night dropped down to 40.7°F.  That means that any additional ripening is going to happen slowly, and it keeps the harvesting window open.  And the long-term forecast is benign, with similar weather expected for the whole outlook.  That's more like what we'd normally expect in late October, not mid-September.  But it's in keeping with the prolonged cool stretches that we've seen all year, at least outside of the six scorching weeks in mid-summer. 

So, we'll enjoy a cellar that is filling up with grapes:

And that chalkboard, that just a few days ago was a literal clean slate? That's starting to fill up too.