Vintage 2020: Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc Harvest

Our last harvest for this growing season that was large enough to bring to Jonathan Edwards Winery occurred on Thursday, October 22, 2020. For this harvest, we had a small group of motivated and hard working harvesters that came at 8 a.m. when the skies were misting and the nets were wet with dew. We only have 4 rows of these red grapes so chances were that the harvest could go very quickly. Here is our harvest crew:

There was a little break between harvesting the Cabernet Sauvignon, which the crew did first and then the Cabernet Franc which was next. Our friend helped us to pick up the Cabernet Sauvignon filled lugs and put them in the half ton bin during this break. When our friend and my husband put the initial row of Cabernet Sauvignon into the half ton bin, we knew we had a problem. The grapes from the lugs filled an entire half ton bin and we only had 3 of those.

The crew got busy harvesting the Cabernet Franc. That did not take very long and around 12:30, the crew was finished and it was time for a well deserved lunch break. During the lunch break we served our 2017 Chenin Blanc Pétillant Naturel, something that we do to celebrate bringing in the last of our harvest.

After the harvest crew left, one of our friends stayed to help us collect lugs from one row of the Cabernet Franc, which went into the last of the three bins that we had.
We took the Cabernet Sauvignon to Jonathan Edwards Winery and picked up another half ton bin and went back to our property to load up the last lugs of the Cabernet Franc. We did this and went back to the winery with the Cabernet Franc where it was put into the winery for destemming the next day.
We arrived at Jonathan Edwards Winery on Friday, October 23, 2020. We cleaned the two half ton bins that the destemmed must would go into and Jonathan Edwards had a perfect place for the bins. We helped to set up the destemmer and the must pump. When everything was in place, the destemming occurred.

First came the weighing of the grapes, handled by Jonathan Edwards and then the destemming. Jay raked the grapes into the destemmer, I controlled the must pump and my husband managed the 2-inch hose from which the must was delivered to the bins. This was the weight of the bins in the order in which it went into the destemmer:

Variety	Bin Order #	Row #	Weight	Tare	Final Weight
Cabernet Sauvignon	Bin #1	Row 2	594	93	501
Cabernet Sauvignon	Bin #2	Row 1	480	93	387
Cabernet Franc clone 327	Bin #3	Row 2	445	92	353
Cabernet Franc clone 214	Bin #4	Row 1	611	92	519

The final weight for each of the two Cabernet varieties were:
Cabernet Sauvignon 888 pounds
Cabernet Franc 872 pounds
The must from these grapes each fit into their designated half ton bin.