Harvest 2012: The End of the Beginning
November 19, 2012
By Chelsea Franchi
And so it appears, just like that, harvest is over and it is time for a season-end wrap up. While I wish I could tell you there was a wonderful celebration as the last cluster was ceremoniously placed in the last tank, I can't. Because that would be a lie. Instead, harvest finished the same way it always does, taking a quiet bow and exiting the cellar while we were all too busy to notice. To be perfectly honest, I'm shocked anyone here would trust me to put anything in print, insofar as my brain, along with everything it controls, is very, very tired.
We have processed countless clusters of fruit, pumped-over, punched-down and pulse-aired every fermenting tank of red twice a day, every day until it was ready to be shoveled out, pressed off and barreled down. We have spent far more time at work with each other than we have spent with our significant others. We have overplayed and worn out all of our favorite albums, playlists, and Pandora stations. I can speak only for myself when I say that my house is a mess and I have a horrible feeling that getting back in to the gym is going to be ugly when it comes to cardio (however, I have been doing a bit of strength training in the form of shoveling fruit out of tanks). I have gulped tepid coffee, fought off colds and ignored the fact that I REALLY need to find my way into a salon to get my roots touched up and my ends trimmed (we're being honest here, yes?)
But here's the thing: it was all worth it. We have thousands of gallons of wine both fermenting and resting in cellar now. Whites are beginning to get topped up, we only have two lots of reds that still need pressing off and almost every single barrel in the cellar is full. While the color we have been seeing this year is a touch lighter than it has been the last few years, the flavors and aromatics we're dealing with are on a whole new plane. The reds in particular (perhaps just because we are more familiar with them at this point) have been showing themselves as dynamic, full and more floral than in vintages past. And there is a lot of it. Blending this year should be wonderfully challenging as we have so many strong and diverse lots at our fingertips. I'm already excited for the next step when we haven't even finished this one, and that's a pretty good feeling.
Some of the scenes that stuck in my head from this harvest:
Draining a tank of Counoise to prepare for pressing
Winemaker Ryan Hebert filling barrels
Grenache going off to bed, so to speak
Pink towels (our favorite) covering fermenting tanks of wine
A bird's eye view of the cellar, mid harvest
Lastly, what the vineyard looks like now, shut down for the coming winter
While the pre-harvest blog was quite a bit more buoyant than this one, it is a true reflection on how we operate here in the cellar. We eagerly anticipate the next step in the process, always thrilled with what is to come. And then, after we have worked our tails off, we're exhausted. The singular driving force that keeps us going is always that "next thing". And, really, what you might think of as the "end" of harvest is just the end of the beginning. It's still early in those grapes' path to the wine you'll taste in bottle in, oh, two or three years. So here's to the next stage in the process. If it goes as well as the last two months, we'll all be happy.