Village Cru(Crew)

On October 6 and October 7, we harvested our Chenin Blanc. One of my friends said that "it takes a village" to make a wine and I concur. First, it takes a Village Cru to harvest the grapes. Although we had an order of magnitude more grapes this year than last, it still only took about 1 hour on Friday and 1 hour of Saturday to harvest our entire crop. For our Chenin Blanc, we like to start as early as humanely possible so that we are starting with cool grapes that will have a chance to retain as much of their aromatics as possible. We have four friends who have designated themselves as "Team Long Pond" who came with head lamps on to unclip the netting so that the harvest could go smoothly.
Bob (Team Long Pond) was our designated tractor driver.

Here is our village cru in action:

Here is the harvest bounty on the truck ready for the crush pad:

Here is a photo of the Village Cru:

Here is a photo of our Premier Cru, Team Long Pond:

Next blogpost will cover the crush pad and beyond.