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Wednesday, October 19, 2022

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.

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