Whew! Harvest sure was a whirlwind. As the snow is falling, we can stop for a breath of air and celebrate what a successful season we had. The first day of harvest was the first day of September and the last day of harvest was the last day of October. We were able to get our final bins in before the first snowfall.

Our team processed 249 tons for our 2017 vintage. We beat last year by 10 tons! Fun fact for you, this is equivalent to approximately 45 million grapes, based on each grape weighing about 5 grams. All of our grapes are picked and sorted by hand. Our fantastic vineyard and cellar crews but a lot of love and sweat into harvest.

A quote from our winemaker Galen Barnhardt:

We took a few more chances this year by expanding our usage of native yeast fermentation (no yeast added, just using the yeast on the grapes and floating about in the winery). All of the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were native ferments this year, plus the majority of the Rose, Riesling, and Cabernet Sauvignon, as well as components of every other wine. We look forward to seeing how the wines develop. I expect to see a change in complexity.

Many of our wines will continue to ferment for another month or so. We pressed off (removed from skins) the last of our red around the end of November. We can’t wait to see what the taste like at the end of this process. We will start bottling our 2017 vintage around the middle of January 2018.