No matter how careful our harvesters are, there will always be some grapes that are left in the vineyard. We take advantage of this oversight, by putting wedding bags on these grapes. We think that the wedding bags are the key to getting the grapes to dehydrate and concentrate their sugars while providing safety from being the target of predators still looking for a sugar high.
As the leaves from the vines begin to fall, we are finding more grapes to bag. In the photo below, the bunch on the left was a bunch we found on November 10 and the bunch on the right was a bunch we found on November 21.
We have been making a late harvest Chenin Blanc since 2019 when we harvested the wedding bags on November 19, 2019. In 2020, we were not able to get to the wedding bags until December 11. Here is a photo of what the grapes looked like:
The 2020 late harvest Chenin Blanc yielded precious little liquid, but we did manage to ferment it and called the wine our version of
The Most Expensive Wine, a Tokaji Essencia.
This year, we are carefully monitoring the transition of Chenin Blanc grape to botrytized raisin so that we don't go too far on the spectrum to raisin. Yesterday, while we were working in the vineyard, we gathered a few grapes and took the Brix measurement. Here is what we found:
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