{"id":2353,"date":"2011-09-04T22:40:33","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T06:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wineintheshower.com\/?p=2353"},"modified":"2011-09-06T14:31:46","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T22:31:46","slug":"2011-syrah-harvest-at-live-oak-vineyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/2011\/09\/04\/2011-syrah-harvest-at-live-oak-vineyard\/","title":{"rendered":"2011 Syrah Harvest at Live Oak Vineyard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Time for another syrah harvest at Live Oak Vineyard<\/a> in Fallbrook!\u00a0 I was the first to arrive, just as the sun broke over the mountains to the East.\u00a0 The weather this year was perfect so far.\u00a0 I did smell a nearby wildfire as I drove up to the vineyard, but nothing threatening to interfere with a perfect harvest.<\/p>\n

Harvest this year was part of a Hands-on Winemaking class I’m leading at Curds and Wine<\/a>.\u00a0 Everyone else in the group started showing up shortly after my arrival, eager and excited for their first wine grape harvest.\u00a0 After some coffee and muffins, Mike and Tricia Hoffman, the vineyard owners and our hosts for the day, gave a brief overview of harvest then lead the group down to start taking the bird netting off of the vines.<\/p>\n

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Step one on harvest day: remove and roll up bird netting just before harvest<\/p><\/div>\n

As we pulled the netting off of the vines, we could hear the birds gathering around us.\u00a0 It was like they knew the grapes were exposed now,\u00a0 so we needed to get to work fast to get the grapes before the birds did.\u00a0 Mike has 140 vines of syrah, clone 877, for us to harvest.\u00a0 We had about 20 people total, and harvest actually went pretty fast — and no one cut their finger this year!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>The grapes looked great this year!\u00a0 We started in the upper vineyard “Cima Sur,” then Mike hauled the load down to the crushpad with his tractor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>We finished up harvesting the lower vineyard “Este,” then moved the grapes to the crushpad.\u00a0 The lower vineyard had a lot more raisins than “Cima Sur.”\u00a0 When we were done, we harvested 1100 pounds!\u00a0 My group will take 600 pounds for our class.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>We fired up the crusher\/destemmer and processed the grapes, then put a little Kmeta<\/a> and dry ice on the must to inhibit spontaneous fermentation.\u00a0 My group will do a 3-day cold soak before pitching our yeasts, partially because it is a convenient day for us to regroup.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>We were done by about 10 am, and we all retired to the patio to toast the 2011 syrah harvest with 2010 vintage Syrah, then have a feast of Italian food.\u00a0 Luckily we were under some cover, as a pretty heavy rain came out of nowhere just before we started eating!<\/p>\n

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After a while we packed up the cans and trucked them back down to Curds and Wine.\u00a0 The must was already warming up a little, so we added a little more dry ice then stirred in pectinase and Opti-Red.<\/p>\n

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An initial brix<\/a> check of the must gave an average of about 24 brix, right on the spot!\u00a0 We didn’t test our pH<\/a> or TA<\/a> yet, but Mike reported in that his must was at pH 3.35 and TA 7.5-8.\u00a0 A perfect harvest this year!\u00a0 The initial color is a dark fuschia, I expect it to become darker by the time we pitch the yeast in a few days.<\/p>\n

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Time for another syrah harvest at Live Oak Vineyard in Fallbrook!\u00a0 I was the first to arrive, just as the sun broke over the mountains to the East.\u00a0 The weather this year was perfect so far.\u00a0 I did smell a nearby wildfire as I drove up to the vineyard, but nothing threatening to interfere with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[99,60,33,61,4,79,62],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2353"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2398,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions\/2398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}