We did a 3-day cold soak on our 2011 syrah, mostly out of convenience. I get a little nervous doing more than 2 days, and I don’t think I’ll soak this long again before pitching the yeast. Besides the cost of putting 10 pounds of dry ice into the buckets every morning, the must does [...]
Tag archive: harvest
Time for another syrah harvest at Live Oak Vineyard in Fallbrook! I was the first to arrive, just as the sun broke over the mountains to the East. The weather this year was perfect so far. I did smell a nearby wildfire as I drove up to the vineyard, but nothing threatening to interfere with [...]
Today I took a group of people in my Hands-on Winemaking class at Curds and Wine up to Fallbrook for a preharvest Vineyard Visit. We picked a perfect day (read as sarcasm), as a heat wave recently hit and it was sweltering. But, it’s always a lovely, if not hot, day at the vineyard. Mike [...]
Got an email from Mike Hoffman yesterday. He took several random samples from his upper vineyard “Cima Sur” and the lower vineyard “Este”. As usual, the upper vineyard has a slightly higher brix reading average of 19 brix, and the lower vineyard is currently at average 17.6 brix. We are shooting for around 23-24 brix [...]
We went to visit Live Oak Vineyard today to see how the syrah is coming along this year. Veraison is already starting in the syrah, so harvest might be a little early this year! Here is the second year growth of the Deaver clone Zinfandel, not yet starting veraison. Check out the giant clusters: And, [...]
We got up at 5 AM today to drive up to Fallbrook to harvest syrah at Live Oak Vineyard. The weather has actually been very nice, it was a nice brisk morning drive up. We had several friends meeting us there to help out with harvest. We did not have any major heat waves like [...]
We have lived in San Diego for about 10 years now, and I can’t believe I didn’t know about Bernardo Winery until now. It is the oldest winery in San Diego (actually in southern California), and is truly a unique venue. The winery tasting room is located on the original winery property, and is now [...]
Just got an update from Live Oak Vineyard on the syrah progress, it’s up to 22 brix already. Harvest should be in about a week, which is actually the same time as last year. So, even though the weather this year has been very strange and is definitely affecting harvest around California, looks like we’re [...]
This “summer” has been unusually cold. Record-setting coolest high temperatures cold. Temperatures were below 70 degrees F on the coast, and mid-70′s inland throughout July. This weird weather is delaying ripening of the grapes, so harvest will be a little later this year, barring another heat wave like last year. Mike Hoffman just sent me [...]
I got an email today from Mike Hoffman that the syrah started veraison and harvest should be around the first week of September. Hopefully there won’t be a last-minute heat wave like last year, which raisined a lot of the grapes before we could pick them for wine. I’ll need to start thinking about what [...]