Vintage 2021: Chenin Blanc Harvest - Part 1

In trying to decide on a harvest day, and knowing that our grapes were almost a week behind the 2020 harvest date, we gathered representative samples from our Chenin Blanc clone 982 and FPS-1 on October 9 and 10. We tested the Brix, pH and TA and came up with these numbers:

Variety	Date of Testing	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Chenin Blanc clone 982	October 9, 2021	973 g	530 mL	18.6	2.95	11.80 g/L
Chenin Blanc clone FPS-1	October 10, 2021	302 g	160 mL	19.3	3.05	9.5 g/L

Looking at those numbers above and looking at the week ahead, we decided to cross our fingers and hope that the nice weather during the coming week would bring the Brix levels up and the total acidity (TA) down. We were indeed fortunate since the temperatures during October 11-17 were in the mid to high 70's, sunny and warm.
We scheduled our harvest for Sunday, October 17 and Monday, October 18, taking in to account feedback from our crew that splitting the harvest of our major variety, Chenin Blanc, over two days would be a good thing.
Here is a photo of a handful of our crew busy at harvesting:

Another change in our operation was to pick up the filled lugs with the t-bins and deploy the lugs into the other rows so that our crew was never looking for an empty lug.

Initially, we decided to harvest 8 of the 17 rows of Chenin Blanc, but the very industrious crew said that "While you have us, use us! Strike while the iron is hot! Let's do a few more rows!" So we decided to harvest 2 more rows of Chenin Blanc and were able to do 10 rows instead of 8 by 2 p.m. we were on a roll and feeling good about how much was accomplished.
The grapes in the lugs were put into the t-bins and there was a total of 7 t-bins to take to Jonathan Edwards Winery. Without going into detail, there was a bit of a snafu with plan A so we deployed plan B with the help of our hunter who called his friend who had a dump trailer that could haul 3 t-bins at a time. Our hunter also had a tarp that could cover the t-bins. My husband put one of the t-bins in his truck so that at the end of the day, there were 6 t-bins on the ground safely covered with a tarp.

On Monday, we had a handful of dedicated people who were determined that we would get the harvest to the winery for pressing. The crew was able to harvest the remaining 7 rows of Chenin Blanc by 2 p.m. and we made the last pressing of the day at Jonathan Edwards Winery. Once at the winery, at the close of the day on Monday, we all breathe a small sigh of relief. Phew!
The following day, on October 18, we were able to get a sample of cold settled juice and got these numbers:

Variety	Date of Testing	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Chenin Blanc total juice after cold settling	October 19, 2021	6200 pounds	496 gallons	20.4	3.17	14.6 g/L

The Brix was now at a good level and the pH and TA are something that we know how to deal with, so alls well that ends well! We want to thank everyone who came on Sunday and Monday to help us harvest our Chenin Blanc and the crew at Jonathan Edwards Winery who are always so kind to us!