Crush 2009 Begins

We harvested our Carneros Chardonnay early Tuesday morning. The pickers arrived before dawn, and began the harvest as the sky began to glow. Moving quickly, they sliced the bunches and dropped them into picking lugs.

Picking is hard work compressed into long days. From my own experience, the opportunities for repetitive motion stress injury are plentiful. These guys pick for the big operations at first morning light, and often will do another night shift for us little guys, sleeping in the day if they can. Everybody wants the fruit to come in cold.

By 11AM, the picking was done and the grapes were loaded in 1/2-ton macrobins onto the back of a large flatbed truck. We took delivery of the grapes at Balletto Winery in Sebastopol right at noon. I pulled into the winery just behind the truck. The bins were offloaded and weighed. Our expected 10 tons became 11... the bins were all quite heavy.

Two bladder presses were loaded with whole clusters, and as the sweet nectar gushed, it was pumped directly into a waiting tanker. After several hours on the pad, we had about 1750 gallons of pressed Chardonnay juice ready for transport. From Balletto, the juice was delivered to MJ Lords Wine Cellars, where I'm making my wine this year. We pumped the juice into two stainless-steel tanks to settle for a couple of days. We'll rack the juice and pitch the yeast later today.

This Chardonnay will be about 20% barrel fermented and will undergo a partial malolactic fermentation. I'm looking to preserve the delicious fruit character at lower alcohol levels (12-12.5% vs. 14+) and to avoid the "butter and wood bomb". This juice will make lovely wine!