End of Harvest

      Harvest seemed to just fly by this year which is fine with us because it went so well.  All of our fruit and fermentations have smelled so tasty and been so smooth, in essence very idle.  We're particularly impressed with the Mountain Terrace cab.  It is big, forward and smooth.  We are thinking this wine has serious rock star potential.  We made four different wines this year; Viognier, Chardonnay, Syrah and Cab.  We also have a barrel and half of some Grenache that we plan on blending with the Syrah to strengthen and sweeten the front palate. There is the plan, then there is what the pallet tells us.  As much as we have an idea of what we are doing, we are just pawns to the flavors of the fruit.  The Kick Ranch Grenache is killer fruit, but the heat wave late in the summer completely decimated the clusters.  2010 began with 6 months of on and off rain with cool, grey skies. The sun barely exposed itself.  Vines were thinned in all our vineyards to give the fruit a longer chance of receiving some heat. Unfortunately, the weather went from cool 70's to 100's in a matter of days. Thus our precious Grenache grapes fried. Imagine those Chilean miners exiting the cave and hanging out on the beach right away. Yeah, not good. We were only able to get one quarter of our agreed upon allocation, which was fine considering that the fruit was sorted in the vineyard and looked and tasted amazing.  The vineyard manager at Kick Ranch has been great to work with and knows his stuff.
     
      Harvest is its own beast. This is our fifth harvest and we have realized that each one is unique and presents different hurdles to jump over. We have a plan before each harvest of our style and have to work around that plan depending on the variables presented.  We were able to get all our fruit off the vine before the rains came at optimal ripeness and were blessed with smooth fermentations.  With little more work to be done right now on the 2010, we're beginning to focus on bottling our 2009 Syrah and Grenache in April.  As our 0-10's sit and go through malalactic fermentation, a second fermentation, we are drinking the last of the 07 Syrah over the holidays and starting to get into the 2008 Cab and Merlot.  We are raising glasses and toast the 2010 vintage. Letting it peculate in the barrel and age till it sings the song that beautiful song we can't get out of our head...cheers.