Vintage 2018: Chenin Blanc Harvest

Our Chenin Blanc harvest is a lesson and a cautionary tale to others. Many things conspired to make this harvest less than what we had planned for:

• We rolled the dice and hoped for an Indian summer to keep on ripening our Chenin Blanc. When we took the Brix reading on September 27, around the time we were harvesting our Auxerrois and Chardonnay, it was at 16 Brix. We hoped that letting the grapes hang a little longer would be beneficial.
• We were still in the process of freeing up the space in our fermentation chambers in the basement to accommodate the Chenin Blanc harvest. Our bottling of our 2017 vintage didn't occur until October 10 and 11, bumping right up to our harvest date of October 14, 2018.
• Instead of an Indian summer, Mother Nature indulged us with rain:

  Date	Inches of Rain
  September 25-26	2-3/4 inches
  September 28	1 inch
  October 2	1-3/4 inches
  October 7	Drizzling all day
  October 11-12	2-3/4 inches
  October 13	Drizzling all day

When people say that rain is not good for grapes, believe it! We were trying to get a bump in Brix reading thinking that hanging the Chenin Blanc for 2 more weeks would give us that boost in sugar, instead, the grapes suffered with rot and the Brix needle did not significantly move.

Varietal	Brix on September 27, 2018	Brix at Harvest	Harvest Date
Chenin Blanc	16	17-18	October 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 2018

Our friends came to help us harvest on October 14, picking grapes from 5 rows of Chenin Blanc. Instead of the 3 tons that we had calculated prior to the rains, we ended up with more like 500 pounds of grapes.
The lesson here is, if there is rain in the future, harvest! Also, make sure that bottling occurs way ahead of planned harvest dates!