Harvest 2017 DeLoach Vineyards September

So I had this Strange Dream Yesterday

A Rite of Passage for a Wino

September....

I was on the freeway, it was still fairly dark out, but you could see a trickle of light about to bring life to the sky, and as I was driving 'and it was the route I usually drive to work' something disturbing was taking up the whole left lane of the 12 on the way to Deloach.  

Tanks!!! Stainless steel freakin open top fermentation tanks! lined the freeway as I drove past them on my way to work! They were there, sitting, waiting to be cleaned by me.  Good lord is this harvest getting to me or what!?  As horrible as this dream may sound, most of the interns are doing 12hr days 6 days a week, but this is nothing compared to the cellar staff that stays and takes care of the wine long after we are gone. How these gentlemen work so tirelessly into the night to make sure Deloache's wines are of the best quality, is something that brings a whole nother level of respect to the craft and an immense love for these wines on top of the love and admiration I already had.
I salute you my friends and hope I can learn as much as possible from you all.
 Cheers to drinking amazing wines!

Constance and I are on the sorting table today!

One of my favorite clones on the property (La Tache) will be sorted through today =) 

We have to make sure we get all of the MOG 'material other than grapes' out! an excessive amount of leaves, little tart green berries, and 2nd crop don't make for pretty wine.  

There are lots to look out for at the sorting table.

This cluster may look pretty, but the berries are extremely tart and hard! Some 2nd crop 'late ripening grapes' we want to pull these clusters out. Some clusters aren't as easy to spot such as this one, so one must pay close attention and feel the clusters to make sure they are soft, which is also a good indicator of ripeness. 

All the same grape variety 'Pinot Noir' and clone, but they are very different from one another!

From left to right cluster 1, 2 & 3

Cluster 1 has an issue called waterberry our winemaker Brian says. These grapes are lighter in color than the other clusters and just taste watery and acidic, they lack flavor! Keep an eye out for these at the sorting table

Sunburnt grapes can have this brown tinge to them or in extreme cases be brown and shriveled.

When tasting them they reminded me of chocolate covered raisins, that may sound yummy but excessive raisiny flavors may make itself present in the finished product, dominating the other beautiful flavors Pinot offers. 

This pretty little Pinot Noir cluster is flaw free =)

As the sorting table shakes, it shakes free as many of the dehydrated berries as it can. These berries fall through the sorting table to a pan below and then the ladybugs have at them =) 

up to the destemmer they go

 The clusters go round and round through the destemmer. Individual berries fall through to a bin below and stems get shot out to the end of the machine. 

 These pretty little berries then make their way into our open top fermentation tanks.

Dry ice 'solid carbon dioxide' is then thrown on top of the grapes to keep the berries cool and the pooling co2 helps retard bacterial growth. 

No yeast required for the Pinot Noir here at DeLoach Vineyards. The Pinot goes through native fermentation! There's tons of yeast around the vineyard and winery and these tanks just kick off on their own pretty much, which means punch down city!

I had the honors to do the first punch down in the winery =D 

There are lots of tanks and t-bins to punch down and this isn't even half of it

The first punch down crew of harvest 2017 at Deloach Vineyards 

We must get juice and temperature samples on each tank every day so that the lab can track the ferment's  progress. 

Juice samples:  

When the Pinot/any wine finishes (to make it simple) its fermentation it's time to press the remaining wine from the berries.
(Don't worry I'll come back and geek out on this later)

Almost done pressing at this point

After the press cycle is finished the pomace looks like a big cake! We surprised one of the harvest interns from Hungary (Constance, our badass intern from France calls them the hungries...I think it's the most adorable thing ever) once we found out it was his birthday =) We wrote Peter across the top of the pomace cake before having to clean the press.
Happy Birthday Peter! send me one of the pictures you got of you and your wine cake and I'll put it on here =D