Harvesting Syrah, Part Two

With more rains in the forecast, I decided to harvest the last of the Syrah on the morning of November 9th. We harvested about 4-1/2 tons by noon. The fruit looked and tasted fantastic. It was the end of our longest year.

At the winery, I broke out a sixer of Spaten Octoberfestbier. It takes a lot of good beer to make good wine. We weighed the grapes and set them aside to crush in the morning.

Jared called me on the 10th; the grapes came in at 23.8 degrees Brix! (One week earlier, the sugar readings were two points lower.) There was one row where we left 30-40% more grapes hanging, in order to check out the effect of less-aggressive cluster thinning. There was no difference in sugar content. We're fermenting that batch separately, so we'll do taste comparisons to get a subjective reading on phenolic development. When all is said and done, we'll have learned something useful about crop load on the Syrah.

The Syrah is fermenting away and the Pinot is almost ready to press...