2012 Merlot Harvest

July 25th Harvested Merlot: 1,100 lbs 26 brix .45 acid Harvested earlier than expected partly because irrigation well pump failed. Harvested in evening and at night. Next day used canopy for shade during day. Crushed at Grape Junction. Cab f still not ready at 21 brix as of 7/28.

Press

We pressed the Merlot and Cab Franc from this year's harvest on 8/28/11. Total yield was about 68 gallons, which should be about 340 bottles. SO2 levels are a tiny bit high at around 70 ppm.  We need to get this down to 50 ppm, but this shouldn't be a problem.

We also checked the wine from the 2010 harvest, which is looking and tasting great at this point!  The Merlot is very full bodied with nice spice/pepper tones, while the cab franc is a much lighter bodied, fruit forward flavor.  We will draw off 2 bottles of each and set them aside to see how they age and then mix the rest together for finishing. We will probably do a light oak and it should be ready to drink in another 6-9 months.

2011 Harvest

2011 marked our second harvest from the vineyard.  Vines were 4th leaf this year. 

Harvest Summary

Merlot - 7/31/2011 - 1,000 lbs. from 13 rows

• brix - 23.8
• acid - 0.8
• ph - 3.5

Cab Franc - 8/7/2011 - 100 lbs. from 1 row

• brix - 23.4

Weather

We had both record low and high temps this season.  Winter saw a cold snap plunge lows down as far as -13 degrees.  This resulted in some cold damage/die back in the Cab Franc.  The Merlot didn't seem to be affected. On the other end, we had record high summer temperatures and drought all season long, with over 40 days of 100 degree-plus highs, commonly up to 110, and almost no rain.  All the heat sped things up, and shortened the growing season by about 2 weeks this year.

Spray Schedule

We had almost no problems with insects, but did still see a bit of black rot in spite of the dry weather.  I ended up spraying fungicide only twice this season - both times directly after a rain. First spray was Rally/Sulphur.  Second spray was Rally/Captan.

Mistakes

Irrigation - Though I irrigated the merlot section quite a bit, I should have irrigated even more with the drought.  And the cab franc vines were so stressed all season that we cut the fruit off of all but one row when the grapes were still very green.  But it turns out the vines were underperforming due to lack of water.  I was irrigating, but not nearly enough.  Once I started watering overnight every other day, all of the vines started to green up and put out new growth.  I will definitely need to finish/repair all parts of the irrigation system for next season. 

Stink Bugs - The one bug problem we did have (though I didn't realize it was a problem at the time) was stink bugs on the vines early in the season.  I did not recognize them to be a harmful pest, but later found out they can damage flowers after bloom, creating very sparse clusters - which we did see.

2011 Bud Break

We had bud break on both varieties around 3/27 this year (while I was out of town on business).  The vines seem healthier than I feared, with some bud dead and some vine death, but with most of the vines pushing out quite a few buds.  We did a rough pruning a few weeks back and are now passing through for a more thorough run.  Still need to wait a week or two to fully assess what kind of state the vineyard will be in this year.

Record Cold Temps

Not much going on in the vineyard over the winter, but over the last week, we've had some super cold weather come through.  Temps in the low single digits last week and tonight, we could see record lows down around -2.

This presents some concern for both the new growth on the vines from this season as well as the graft unions. Hoping damage will be minimal, but we'll see come spring.

Update - temps actually got down to -13!

Harvest!

Really late getting this posted, but here were the end results:

  * Varietal name - Merlot
    * Date harvested - 8/8/2010
    * Tons produced - 346 lbs
    * Final Brix, PH, and Acid measurements - brix 21.75, TA .5, specific gravity 1.094
    * Vine age - 3 years
    * Number of vines - 500
    * % Sold (and, optionally to whom) - 0
    * % Retained by you (for winemaking, etc) - 100
    * % Unharvested (reason - i.e. no buyer, black rot, etc.) 0



    * Varietal name - Cabernet Franc
    * Date harvested - 8/8/2010
    * Tons produced - 237 lbs
    * Final Brix, PH, and Acid measurements - Brix 21.25, specific gravity 1.090
    * Vine age - 3 years
    * Number of vines - 350
    * % Sold (and, optionally to whom) - 0
    * % Retained by you (for winemaking, etc) - 100
    * % Unharvested (reason - i.e. no buyer, black rot, etc.) - 0

Feels really close...

The heat is doing a number on the vines.  Lots of yellow/crinkled leaves when I got back into town and checked tonight.  And on top of that, my drip system has died - some problem with the valves.  I tried feeding water back in manually with a bypass hose tonight so we'll see if that works.

I took 100-berry samples of both grapes tonight for testing:


Merlot:
Brix: 23
pH: 3.24
Acid: 0.4 - 0.5 (?)

Cab Franc:
Brix: 20 3/4
pH: 3.22
Acid: 0.6 (?)

I think the Merlot are techically ready to pick.  The grapes are very soft/squishy feeling with a few out there even starting to shrivel.  When we tasted the juice after testing it, it was delicious!

As the numbers would indicate, the Cab are close behind and the juice there was quite sweet and tasty as well, with just a hint of tartness/bite.  Waiting for professional feedback on next steps, lol.