Winemaker Journal: September 2009 Jeff Herinckx What’s going on at the winery We have been bottling morning, noon, and night. We’re working six days a week, sometimes more than twelve hours a day in order to get all of the wine filtered and ready to be bottled. The 2007 Chardonnay was still in the tanks and it’s now completely bottled. We’ve also bottled a lot of Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir and we hope to finish the Niagara within the next week or two. We hope to complete all of our bottling in September and we will probably have to bottle during harvest, due to our limited warehouse space. September is also a time when we clean, scrub, and test all of the equipment; it is a very busy month for us. Our final Toast to the Tunes event of the season was the biggest one yet! The parking lot was jammed, and there were over 500 people in attendance. I found myself in a booth opening bottles, and I could hardly keep up! These events have become more popular than I ever thought they’d be. Harvest We expect to begin harvesting during the last week of September, weather permitting. The weather conditions so far have been favorable, and the extended forecast looks just as good. This year’s harvest will be less than half of last year’s quantity. We have very little Riesling this year, no Chardonnay, and we’ve cut back on the amount of Pinot Noir. In fact, we cut back on all of our large producers this year. Because we won’t have huge quantities from only two vineyards, we’ll have a better opportunity to blend. As of the first of the month, most of our grapes are two to three weeks from harvest. Our plan is to start with the Muller Thurgau and the Gewürztraminer. Our Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris will likely follow. We will harvest the Niagara when the acid level is desirable, regardless of the sugar in those grapes. Pinot Report This year, we’re acquiring grapes from some vineyards that we worked with years ago. Dion Vineyard has Pinot Noir that’s available to us for the first time in five or six years. We’d asked him in years past to keep us in mind if he had a surplus, and we’re fortunate to be able to bring in some of his Pinot this year. We are also purchasing Pinot grapes this year from Bill Beran. It has been 18 years since we worked with Bill’s fruit; he’s been making his own wine in recent years. As Bill transitions to retirement, he has asked us for assistance with his crop. We will crush at his location and will haul our portion of the juice back to Oak Knoll. We are really looking forward to the potential that working with grapes from both of these vineyards holds for this vintage! That's it for now...talk to you next month. Jeff Herinckx Home | Our Story | What's New | Wines
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