Vintage 2026: Chenin Blanc Clone FPS-1 Harvest

In early November, we had back to back harvests. First the red varieties came in on Sunday, November 1 and got destemmed on Monday, November 2. Then we had a second Chenin Blanc harvest of our clone FPS-1 on Tuesday, December 3. A few of our stalwart friends came to help us with this year's penultimate harvest. This will be the first time that we will be taking in the FPS-1 clone without our 982 clone being in the mix.
Although the harvest was a difficult one with grapes that were either too raisined or too green or too diseased, our friends did a great job of culling and selecting just the best grapes. We finished up around 11:30 and were able to have a nice lunch in what turned out to be a beautiful fall day.

We took our harvest to Stonington Vineyards on Wednesday, November 4 and Jim and Dakota were waiting for us at the press. There were about 30 lugs of good quality grapes that went into the press and when all was said and done, we had about 50 gallons of juice. The Brix came in at 21.3^o which was very good!

Variety	Harvest Date	Brix	pH	TA g/L	Lbs	Gals
Chenin Blanc FPS-1	November 3, 2026	21.3	3.17	7.70 g/L	625	50

With all but the late harvest Chenin Blanc harvested, we were finally able to let out a small exhale. Our friends deserve all the accolades that we can bestow upon them! They were a great help and a life saver helping us to harvest what I will remember to be a challenging year.

Vintage 2026: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Barbera Harvest

We are coming to the end of the harvest season. On November 1, our friends came to help us harvest our red varieties. There was frost on the ground when we began with the net raising at 8 a.m. but that went smoothly and we began harvesting around 9:30. We only have 2 rows each of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Barbera so the harvest went very quickly because the reds remained disease free and unlike the white varieties they are definitely distinguishable from the grape leaves.

We began by harvesting the Cabernet Sauvignon followed by the Barbera. Our reason for doing it this way is because the Cabernet Sauvignon and the Cabernet Franc grapes look virtually identical. The Barbera, however is a very different looking grape so having that between the two Cabernets seemed a good way to distinguish the two varieties. The harvest went into the rental truck.

It turned out to be a beautiful day and we took a break for lunch. As is customary, when we can, we like to provide our harvesters with a wine made from the variety that was harvested. On this day, we shared the 2025 Barbera which we bottled the day before!

On Monday, we took our harvest to Stonington Vineyards where Mike, Jim and Dakota were waiting for us. We also were lucky enough to be able to borrow three half ton bins from Jonathan Edwards. We wanted our red grapes destemmed by not crushed so Mike configured their destemmer to accommodate us.

What would have taken us an entire day to do was accomplished in less than an hour. We brought the destemmed grapes back to our Taugwonk Spur location and took the Brix reading for the harvest by hydrometry.

Variety	Harvest Date	Brix	pH	TA g/L	Lbs	Gals
Cabernet Sauvignon	November 1, 2026	22.0	3.23	8.4 g/L	625	50
Cabernet Franc	November 1, 2026	24.7	3.30	10.9 g/L	500	40
Barbera	November 1, 2026	23.0	3.07	12.9 g/L	188	15

Again, our heartfelt thank you to all of our friends who gave up their Sundays to help us harvest our grapes. Also, thank you to Jonathan Edwards, Mike, Jim and Dakota! We are lucky to have friends in the business who are so willing to give us a hand!

Vintage 2026: Chenin Blanc Harvest

We took a two week break between the Chardonnay harvest and our Chenin Blanc harvest. Our friend Mary helped us to get a representative sampling of grapes from our 17 rows of Chenin Blanc on October 14. We learned that for rows 1 through 6 the Brix was at 18.8, rows 7-12 at 17.5 and our FPS-1 clone was at 17. These numbers are too low to make a good still wine. So we had a few decisions to make.

We decided that we should go through the first 8 rows of Chenin Blanc to see if we could do anything to raise the Brix a few degrees. This is what we decided to do. Beginning on October 20, my husband and I went through our Chenin Blanc, tasting the green grapes and determining if they should be cut off.
In the photo above, there is a bin of the green grapes as well as rotten grapes that we removed. It did take us until Friday, October 23 to go through all 8 row, cutting off the green clusters and the clusters affected with sour rot and botrytis. We hauled the culled grapes to our compost pile. Here is what nearly a ton of grapes looks like on the ground in the photo on the right.
Since the weather on Sunday, October 25 looked to be a promising one for harvest, my husband sent out a call to our friends. Initially a handful of people responded but as the harvest date approached we had a good crew of harvesters. We started with raising the nets at 8 am and at 9 am, people were assembled to begin harvesting. All of us were focused on bringing in the 8 rows of Chenin. Sad to say, neither my husband nor I stopped to take any pictures!
When all was said and done, we had 88 filled lugs to bring to Stonington Vineyards on Monday morning. The crew at Stonington Vineyards, Mike, Jim and Dakota were also busy destemming the rest of their Cabernet Franc that they began harvesting on Sunday. But since processing red grapes is different from processing white grapes the two were done simultaneously on their loading dock. We were able to get our pressed juice by 12:30! We brought the juice back to our facility at Taugwonk Spur and took some measurements of the juice.

The Brix as measured by the hydrometer method came in at 22! We had about 170 gallons of juice in our transport tank.
Here are the statistics for our Chenin Blanc harvest:

Variety	Harvest Date	Brix	pH	TA g/L	Lbs	Gals
Chenin Blanc	October 25, 2026	22.0	3.05	8.30 g/L	2,125	170

We want to thank all of our friends who turned up to make our Chenin Blanc harvest a successful one! A big thank you to those who stayed late to help get the lugs into the truck!

Vintage 2026: Chardonnay Harvest

On Sunday, October 11, a week after our first harvest of Auxerrois, we sent out a call for help to our friends that we would be harvesting our Chardonnay. The weather again was a factor, in fact this Sunday, another rain storm was coming in, the remnants of hurricane Isaias. We moved the net raising from 8:30 to 7:30 and many people came early to help us raise 8 rows of nets in one hour! The harvest began soon after that. Impending rain is a huge motivator, so our friends rose to the occasion to harvest 8 rows of Chardonnay by 11:20!

The Chardonnay grapes were in good condition, having miraculously survived all the rain events with little to no rot. The clusters were small and loose which probably helped with preventing rot from happening.

After harvest, we still had some time before the rains would come into southeastern Connecticut so we were able to enjoy lunch with our friends.

It rained all of Sunday afternoon and evening, not ending until very early Monday morning. On Monday, October 12, we brought the harvest to Stonington Vineyards where Mike, Jim and Dakota were waiting for us. The press was loaded with the Chardonnay as whole clusters and the cycle was started at 8:30. By the time the press cycle ended at 10:30, the sun was out and the skies were blue! The juice was pumped into our transport tank and we brought it back to our winery on Taugwonk Spur road.

We removed some of the juice and checked for Brix, pH and titratable acids:

Variety	Harvest Date	Brix	pH	TA g/L	Lbs	Gals
Chardonnay	October 11, 2026	22.0	3.30	7.6 g/L	1,750	140

We were surprised and happy that the Chardonnay was at 22 Brix. We could not have done this without the help from all of our friends! We want to thank our friends as well as the crew at Stonington Vineyards, Mike, Jim and Dakota for helping us with a successful Chardonnay harvest!