Vintage 2026: Harvest Might be Just Around the Corner

We have been busy urfurling our nets over our grapes to protect them from the birds. So far, since we noticed the Auxerrois softening, we have managed to net just about half of the vineyard with another half to go. Fortunately, this will be the Chenin blanc, which for some reason is the last to reach veraison.
Here are our red varieties:

When we took one of the dark purple berries from the Cabernet sauvignon, the Brix was already at 16!
It's time to update the Annual Cycle of Growth chart:

So far, veraison seems to be similar to what it was in 2025. In a typical year, the first grape variety that we harvest is the Auxerrois followed by the Chardonnay. We believe that this will hold true this year.
Today is a rain day but the weather looks good tomorrow, so it will be back in the vineyard to unfurl more nets!

Vintage 2026: Veraison

We generally know when our grapes begin to ripen, but this year it seemed to be a little late until we went to the vineyard 3 days ago and found that our Auxerrois was beginning to enter veraison, which is the first stages of ripening. Auxerrois is a white variety so signs of ripening include softness to the touch and a change in color from dark green to a chartreuse green. In a typical year, the Auxerrois ripens first. This year, we saw signs of bird pecking on our Auxerrois, which is a sure sign of sugar accumulation and a signal to us to get the nets in place to protect the grapes from the birds!

While we were netting the Auxerrois, we noticed that the few Cabernet Sauvignon vines that are in the Auxerrois were changing color. For a red variety like Cabernet Sauvignon, that is the visual sign of veraison. So, we went to check on our red grapes and the Cabernet Sauvignon as well as the Barbera were just beginning to change color.

The grapes are giving us our marching orders! Get the nets in place!

Racking Our Late Harvest Botrysized Chenin Blanc

On December 7, 2025 we harvested our late harvest Chenin blanc, which is a wine made from botrysized grapes. The conditions must be just so in order for this good form of botrytis fungus to infect the grapes, leaving the grape berry to look remarkably like a raisin, dehydrating and concentrating the sugars and the acids.
We brought in 6 lugs of grapes still in their organza bags and proceeded to press the juice out of the bags. We were able to get slightly more than two gallons of juice with a starting Brix of 32.
We began fermentation with a yeast called SM102 which is known to be a slow fermenter and also not able to ferment the high sugar content of the juice once the alcohol level reaches 12%.
On Monday, August 10, we racked the finished wine away from its lees (dead yeast) and were able to get two gallons of wine which we are storing before we bottle.

We dedicate half of a row in our vineyard toward this effort and the result is two gallons of racked Chenin blanc. In the glass, the color was a golden amber and the taste was sublime. It still needs some bottle aging, but it is well on its journey to become a true representation of a late harvest botrysized Chenin blanc.

2021 Forge Cellars Riesling

A few weeks ago, one of us was feeling the need to have fried chicken. We looked up a recipe from Ina Garten for oven friend chicken which sounded very good. The only drawback was that the chicken needed to soak overnight in buttermilk. This is a crucial step in having moist, delicious fried chicken, so satifying the craving had to be postponed for 24 hours. Ina's fried chicken is a good thing to have when time is limited because the actual frying part takes only 6 minutes, three minutes on each side of the chicken and then the chicken spends the next 40 minutes in the oven. Ina recommended 350 degrees but I think 375 gets the chicken crisper.
We made up our own flour coating for the chicken which consisted of 2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon each of onion powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika and 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper. We didn't add any salt or pepper, but in retrospect, we would add salt and pepper to the flour mixture. Here is what it looked like:

We paired the fried chicken with a 2021 Forge Cellars Riesling. This was perfect! In November 2024, we took a short trip to Ithaca and went to Forge Cellars, this is a wine from that trip. The Caywood, Seneca Lake Riesling was dry on the palate and a perfect compliment to the fried chicken.

Fried chicken craving satisfied!