Our Chenin Blanc harvest is when we need all of our friends to come and help us and Sunday, October 22 was slated for this year's harvest. Prior to Sunday, we had to run the gauntlet of rain on Friday and Saturday and heavy winds on Sunday. Once again, we resorted to crossing our fingers for no lingering rain on Sunday morning and no gusty winds. The weather gods were kind to us and the rain on Saturday ended around 5 p.m. with winds that gusted for two hours after that. In our minds, that was perfect because the winds dried the wetness on the grapes and canopy and made for near perfect conditions for harvest.
Our friends who know our pre-harvest drill came to help us raise the nets on 17 rows of Chenin Blanc and when 9:30 arrived, the rest of our crew came and began the harvest.
Based on feedback from our previous harvest, the yellow cart that we have was a hit with the crew so we purchased one more. With the cart, there is less bending down and the harvested grapes can be delivered to the people who volunteered to clean the clusters.
Most of the grapes were harvested by noon and by that time the sun was out so that our friends could relax with lunch. After lunch, our conscientious friends helped us clean every single bunch of grapes so that we would bring only the best bunches to get pressed. This took until 3 p.m.
Our son from Massachusetts stayed to help us shrink wrap the two pallets of grapes, which constituted the entirety of the harvest and we put a tarp over the bounty to protect it overnight.
The following morning, our friends Bob and Betsy came to transport one of the pallets to Jonathan Edwards Winery and we took the other pallet. When we arrived at the winery around 9, Jon was there to help us unload the pallets.
Dan helped us to weigh the pallet with the filled lugs. Dan and Josh put the whole clusters into the press from the lugs, since whole cluster is the way we like to press our grapes. After the grapes went into the press, the pallet was weighed again with the empty lugs to get the final weight of the grapes.
Pallet 1 which contained 35 lugs weighed 751 pounds and the second pallet which contained 28 lugs weighed 659 pounds for a total of 1410 pounds of Chenin Blanc.
The press cycle began around 11. We had two clean 75 gallon stainless steel barrels in which to transfer the juice. Our friends Mary and Barry came to watch the press in action and brought Clyde's Cider Mill donuts and cider!
When the juice was in the press pan, we shared it with our friends and it was delicious! We also took a sample so that we could record these numbers:
| Variety |
Weight |
Volume
of Juice |
Brix |
pH |
TA |
| Chenin Blanc |
1410 |
120 gallons |
20 |
3.05 |
8.7 g/L |
The pressed juice was then allowed to cold settle for approximately 40 hours which gave us a little respite.
We want to thank all of the people who came to help us harvest the Chenin Blanc we could never do it without you! Also a HUGE thank you to Jonathan Edwards and his people who have now become our friends!
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