Vineyard Cleanup

Harvest is over and that is a huge relief but there are still many things to do in the vineyard. One of our major concerns was bringing in the botrytized and rotten Chenin Blanc that was left in the vineyard after harvest.
Although we brought in our last varieties, our red grapes on October 21, our Chenin Blanc fell victim to the rains that came before harvest and every bout of rain brought more degradation in the quality of the grapes such that when harvest time came around on October 17 and 18, we asked our crew to pick only the best clusters and clean the slightly flawed clusters. They did that to perfection and we ended up with 2-1/2 tons of quality grapes. However, that meant that the Chenin Blanc that were not harvested were still hanging in the vineyard.
Yesterday, marked the milestone when all of the botrytized grapes were removed and the grapes that were not too affected were bagged with organza wedding bags for a late harvest dessert wine.

A little historical background: We have been using organza bags to protect our ripening grapes since our first crop of Chenin Blanc in 2016. Now that we have a fully producing vineyard, we do not bag the entire vineyard and use side netting, but we do try to dedicate a few clusters to producing a late harvest dessert wine. This year, we have a bit more than a few clusters so it will be exciting to do a final harvest of wedding bags later this year.