2022 Chenin Blanc Harvest

Our Chenin Blanc harvest occurred on Sunday, October 16 and Monday, October 17. Before harvest could occur however, we had one more round of rainfall from Thursday, October 13 into Friday October 14 that we had to deal with. Wet weather just degrades grape quality in a big way. Although we didn't have the flooding conditions that some forecasters called for, we did have a steady rain that lasted for approximately 12 hours.
When Sunday came around, we had a hard working crew of approximately 35 people who helped us select only the best grapes to put into our yellow lugs. We have 17 rows of Chenin Blanc so on Sunday, the crew helped us to harvest the first 11 rows of Chenin Blanc. On Monday, we harvested the rest of the best grapes from the remaining rows.
On Monday, we had 6-1/2 bins of good quality Chenin Blanc that were at Jonathan Edwards winery. Unfortunately, it was raining again on Monday and Jon opined that he thought the grapes were in good shape and advised us come back first thing Tuesday morning to begin the destemming and pressing. It was very good advice! We went back yesterday and the destemming and pressing commenced from 10 a.m. and ended at 1:10 p.m.

Here is a comparison to previous year's numbers at harvest:

Variety	Harvest Date	Brix	pH	TA	Lbs	Gals
Chenin Blanc
	October 14, 2019	21.6	3.15	13.5 g/L	3930	305
	October 11, 2020	23.3	3.09	12.1 g/L	8201	655
	October 17-18, 2021	20.4	3.17	14.6 g/L	6200	496
	October 16-17, 2022	21.0	3.07	8.9 g/L	4901	392

Again, we do want to thank all of our dedicated crew for helping us to harvest just the best of the Chenin Blanc.