Vintage 2018: Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc Harvest

This retrospective analysis of our 2018 harvest is moving along very slowly on my blogposts. Shortly after we finished up with the Chenin Blanc harvest, we harvested the red varieties, our Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. We planted only 2 rows of each variety as a test so this harvest, our very first harvest of reds, was a small one.
The morning didn't bode well since it rained (did I mention that this Fall has been the rainiest ever!) but by noon, the sun had come up and our original harvest time arrived. Harvest began on Saturday, October 20 around noon and finished up at 1:45 p.m. We had help from 3 of our friends and their 2 tweenagers.

When all was said and done, our crew harvested 7 lugs of Cabernet Sauvignon and 6 lugs of Cabernet Franc.

When the data were collected for our reds, this is what it looked like:

Varietal	Brix on August 25, 2018	Brix at Harvest	Harvest Date
Cabernet Sauvignon	11	17	October 20, 2018
Cabernet Franc	13	18.5	October 20, 2018

This question then became, what to do with the red grapes. We decided that the Cabernet Sauvignon would be destined to be a rosé and we would vinify the Cabernet Franc into a red wine. One of our friends loaned us his destemmer/crusher so, the following day, we were fortunate enough to have 2 more of our friends come to help us with the destemming and crushing of the reds. (Sidebar: I really wanted to pull off each individual grape from the rachis by hand, but guess who said "no".)

The destemmer/crusher made quick but messy work of the 13 lugs of red grapes we needed to juice. The destemmed and crushed grapes went into two 30 gallon plastic fermenting barrels, one for each variety. Phew! Harvest is over!