Vintage 2023: Chardonnay Harvest

We had tentatively scheduled our Chardonnay harvest for Saturday, October 7, but when the day got closer, we realized that it would be another rainy weekend so we decided to see if we could count on our closest friends to come and help us harvest the Chardonnay on Thursday, October 5.

A small but enthusiastic crew came and started our net raising ritual at 8 a.m. It was a very wet morning and there were spider webs everywhere around the vines. Some of them were very beautiful and I had to stop to take photos!
Harvest began at at 9:30 a.m. Mary, Barry, Laurie, Michael, Bob, and Kelly harvested 8 rows of Chardonnay in 2-1/2 hours! Granted there weren't too many grape clusters but the harvest was spread over 8 rows each 800 feet long!
The haul was similar to the Auxerrois harvest on October 1 so we brought the lugs back to our industrial space. Our friends helped us to set up our Lancman VSPIX 250. We learned a few things from the Auxerrois pressing that we applied to our Chardonnay pressing.
The Lancman was first cleaned and then the press bag was put on the basket. In the manual, the directions calls for the press bag to be folded towards the bellows. Once that is done, the metal flange on the basket is rotated in place to secure it to the metal tab on the base.

There were a few more take home lessons from the Auxerrois pressing. During that press, we had our friends squeeze the grapes in preparation for pressing, according to the instructions in the manual.
However, as the Auxerrois pressing progressed, we realized that squeezing the grapes first might not be what we really wanted to do because it lead to an uneven distribution of the squeezed grapes in the Lancman. So, we asked for feedback from our friends and tried their suggestions.
One suggestion was to partially fill the bellows (we called it the hot dog), put in the whole clusters as evenly around the press as possible until we filled the press. This is what we tried. The first press went very well. The juice came out and had a beautiful light green color. The hydrometer reading for the Chardonnay was 19. Everyone had a small taste of the juice.

It took a while for the remaining pressing to happen because of unforseen problems with the pump my husband was using that was hooked up to his truck's battery. Fortunately for us, our neighbors in our industrial space are electricians!
They had an outdoor hose which they let us borrow. After a few more fits and starts, we were able to get their hose to fill the press bellows and we were once again in business. Laurie and Curt stayed until all of the grapes were pressed and the area around the press was cleaned. Thank you both so much! We want to thank all of our friends who came to help us with the harvest and pressing.
More information on the fate of the Chardonnay juice to follow. Stay tuned.