Pressing the Wines and New Barrels

We pressed the first wines of the vintage after a few days off harvesting. Starting tomorrow were back in the vineyard cleaning off the remaining Zinfandel and hopefully next week taking the Petite Sirah. Everything is going well, so far so good, all the equipment is working great and the fruit is coming in just right.

It's an interesting year - strange weather all year, but more interesting to me is the the lack of birds attacking the fruit. And the lack of yellow jackets at this time of year - they were heavy in early summer and I was worried - but they seem to have left of died off.

Also the lack of fruit fly and ladybugs this year is very odd - maybe the strange weather disrupted the insect development cycle. Not that I'm wishing for more fruit fly - but more ladybugs would have been nice.