Proprietor’s Blog 10/26 Harvest 2022 Comes to an End

Happy end of harvest! Yes the time finally has come and the long work days on the farm are behind us. Our harvest officially ended October 18th with our Pamela’s Vineyard Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon being harvested.

This year was a huge year with higher than expected yields and a lot of unexpected weather changes. Towards harvest, the weather was crazy with those aggressive heatwaves spiking sugar levels and pushing harvest two weeks early in many areas of our vineyards.

We’re excited to see what this year brings because we’re finding that even with such high yields, we have quite an extensive quality.

Back in July we did a “green drop” which is where we cut off grapes growing in undesirable places on the vines in order to direct the nutrients to the grapes located in healthy locations. This usually would result in less fruit on the vines, yet we were still able to produce high quality fruit and high yields this year.

As harvest now comes to a close, we turn our focus over to the winery where we’re finishing up fermentation, racking and prepping for the aging of the wines in their vessels.

During fermentation we always attempt to do a native fermentation first. Native fermentation is the process of allowing naturally occurring yeasts (these yeasts come into the winery on the grapes and the pick bins) to take hold of the fermentation process rather than inoculating the juice to make wine. Sometimes, the yeast strains on the wine are not strong enough to continue fermentation, or the stronger strains are not the best for the flavors you want in your wine. This year, we felt it was best to use a classic strain. With higher sugar levels and yields, we went with the classic D-20 yeast strain to ferment our Bordeaux-variety-driven wines. It helps give our Cab the ability to develop robust yet supple flavors. This strain was cultivated from Daou Mountain in Paso Robles, and is one of our favorites.

The next step in our cycle is the upcoming holiday sales! Reminder, we’ve got two new wines dropping November 1st! Truly exciting delicious wines for your holiday season. I’m excited to release our brand new 2019 Miracle Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon from the Malibu Coast and 2021 Happy Canyon Sauvignon Blanc.

These two wines are absolutely spectacular and will definitely be a hit this winter. They’ll be available to the public on 11/1. Until then, visit our store to grab some great wines to enjoy this weekend!

There’s a lot that has been going on outside of the wine as of late, so my apologies if I haven’t been getting back to you so quickly. But never hesitate to send an email. We’re happy to help the best we can!

Until next harvest, little vineyards!

Cheers,

Amanda