Harvest Blog - September 16th

I can’t believe I’m about to write this, but we’re nearly halfway through harvest. As Megan reported last week, a multi-day heat wave hastened ripening throughout the Central Coast, and we’ve been bringing in grapes from vineyards throughout Monterey County and Paso Robles. It’s cooled off now, but we anticipate continuing to harvest at a rapid pace in the coming days.

It’s years like this that I’m particularly thankful for our Pellenc grape harvesters. We pick much of our fruit by hand, but these machine harvesters allow us to bring in many more tons of grapes per day than we could otherwise. With the heat causing so many of our vineyard blocks to ripen simultaneously, the Pellencs have been a lifesaver this year, allowing us to get fruit into the winery in a timely fashion. Plus, a Pellenc harvester is a pretty amazing piece of equipment. Each of ours has an on-board sorting table with rollers that separate the berries and juice from the leaves and stems (known as MOG - material other than grapes). The grapes arrive at the winery in pristine condition, ready for processing. An added bonus: the MOG is left in the vineyard, putting healthy organic matter back into the soils.

We often make improvements to our infrastructure but the one I’m most excited about this year is the newly paved road to the winery. No more potholes! As someone who drives it almost daily, I love this new surface, and we think visitors will appreciate it too. It’s so smooth I’ve decided to call it our Laguna Seca racetrack!

Patrick Headley
Director of Viticulture