Old Vine Carignane Harvested...

Last Saturday, with Photo Bob our favorite photographer and transportation director, we fetched and processed a wonderful load of Old Vine Carignane - making this our third vintage from the beautiful Evangelho Vineyard.

Compared to 2008, our journey was relatively smooth - we made good time, the weather was mild, and we arrived safely home to find plenty of help to move the fruit through the crush.

We started this year's journey at 11:30 Friday evening, but we had done some pre-planning in the weeks prior. We made new lids and had lining for the bins, and we were much better prepared for transportation issues. This planning helped keep the fruit cool, arriving at 66 degrees after a long day traveling in the sunshine.

We arrived in Contra Costa at 4:30am in time for a quick bite at Denny's and arrived at the vineyard before the pickers. As the Sun came up over this 120 year old vineyard, our bins were getting full. We worked to find the ideal spots within the vineyard and by 9:30 we had loaded the bins and we were back on the road.

Today, the Old Vine Cariginane is beginning to ferment in small bins inside our cool winery. Everything has gone perfectly for this wine so far, we look forward to another killer wine from this old vineyard.

Just Waiting for the Fruit to Ripen...

The netting of the vineyard is done and we have at least 2 more weeks before we start to pick any estate fruit. And we await the right day next week to pick our old vine Carignane - we've made the old vine Carignane twice before (2006 and 2008) and now our third vintage is about ready to harvest.

The title above isn't really true, we're taking advantage of this time to get a few things done around the house. But, it has been HOT out and working outside is nowhere near as fun when its hot. Now, we'll clean the winery top to bottom and prepare for our first crush of the season.

The Toucan Wines vineyard looks good, we did suffer a little from the mid-August heat wave. The result of some burned clusters will reduce our crop, but all in all, the vineyard is holding up well. Thank you to all our volunteers who helped with netting day. I look forward to seeing you all again during harvest. Pictured: friend and neighbor Ray during netting, he's waiting for those of us behind the tractor to catch-up.