The harvester has been going just about all night, and it is still going this morning. This picture is of the harvester running on the 15th of this month. The rest of these pictures are a mixture from that date till today. The days have been a whirlwind, so you can imagine that it is hard to recount in order.
The days have been hot and beautiful, wonderful for the grapes ripening.
Since the majority of the Viognier grapes are from secondary buds (because of the late spring freeze that we had freezing out the primary buds), these are being harvested a little later in the season than in some years.
While most are of our red grapes, like these Merlot grapes and some later budding white grapes are mostly primary buds. What this means is that our harvest this year is being squish into a shorter total time period. In past years, harvest might have been spread out over six weeks or more. This year it may be started and ended within a month.
In the last week, more equipment has been coming together at the barn close to our vineyards.
The crush press has been running as needed.
Grapes have been filling the bins.
And I did miss the presses running, so all I got to see was the trash waste.
But I did get to see grapes.
And the new pumps to replace older, smaller ones that we had.
I also got to meet Chase Lane who with his wife has a small vineyard of Tempranillo in Ropesville with another acre or so close to Brownfield. He had proudly brought in this beautiful bin of fruit to be loaded on a truck with some of our grapes to go to Messina Hof Winery.
This morning the vineyards were beautiful.
More Viognier to be harvested for Becker Vineyards and Pedernales Cellars.
Had a little harvester trouble. I asked Kyle if it was major or minor. He said very minor. When you have a new machine you have to stop and tighten things up after a while. But, when we finally get to taste the wine made from these grapes, I am sure that we will feel that it was worth all this hard work.
Need to get a little sleep and then a few more pictures.
Blessings,
Betty
