Vintage 2025: Late Harvest Noble Rot Chenin Blanc

We still have one more harvest to go. It is our late harvest noble rot Chenin blanc. We bagged half a row of Chenin Blanc on October 16 with organza wedding bags and to ensure that the bagged grapes are further protected, we enclosed the bagged grapes in netting. We have been doing this since 2019 when we found out that conditions on our land are conducive to producing noble rot during the fall.
We have two clones of Chenin blanc in our vineyard. Only one of our two clones of Chenin blanc will be affected with the noble rot. Clone 982, which is an ENTAV clone from France is the one that the Botrytis cinerea infects and not clone FPS-1.
We have been monitoring the sugar levels in the grapes and as of yesterday, November 21, the Brix is a 29 degrees. A comparison of the grapes from November 1 and November 21 shows that the grapes are coming along:

This year, we have been having a problem with some wild animal, most likely raccoons that have been bold enough to make their way into the netting and eating the bagged grapes. On November 1, we came to the vineyard to check on the grapes and found empty bags littering the ground.

Besides raccoons, there may yet be another wild animal eating our grapes. This time, the bags are just gnawed at and left still hanging on the vine.

So, at this point, it is a race between sugar accumulation and wild animal devastation!

1999 Cristom Pinot Noir Marjorie Vineyard

A few nights ago, we had our friends over for dinner. Our friends also have a vineyard in East Haddam and they loaned us their crusher/destemmer to destem our red harvest. My husband made his stuffed pork chops and we had side dishes of wild rice and green beans almondine.

To pair with the meal, my husband descended to his cellar and brought up this 1999 Cristom Pinot Noir from the Marjorie Vineyard. The pairing was perfect and we had a wonderful evening. I think that this is the highest calling of wine: a great pairing with food leading to a very memoriable evening with good friends.

Their label was interesting to me. On the back was a map showing the location of Marjorie vineyard where the grapes for this wine came from. I wanted to learn more about Cristom and went to their website. Cristom Vineyards is located in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. It was established in 1992 by the Gerrie family and has been family-owned for over thirty years.
Here is an interesting factoid: the name 'Cristom' was chosen by Paul Gerrie to honor his children Christine and Tom. The crest on the front of the label was created by the artist, Timothy Tyler and reflects the various items and activities cherished by Paul Gerrie. They farm 90 acres of vines using biodynamic and organic principles.
They consider themselves to be stewards of their east-facing volcanic hillside in the Eola-Amity Hills focused on growing benchmark Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
Shortly after we had the Cristom, my husband and I chanced upon this film from Oregon Public TV showing how Oregon became famous for their Pinot Noir. The documentary was very interesting and watching it reminded us of the time that we went to the International Pinot Noir Conference in McMinnville in 2006.
Here is a link to the documentary that we watched: It was very interesting to us to see how the early grape growers and winemakers in Oregon banded together to make Oregon Pinot noir and Chardonnay world renown! Which lead me to ask my husband "How many more Cristoms do we have?" He said "none!"

Vintage Summary: Harvest Statistics for 2019-2025

We have always been keeping track of our harvest statistics. This lets us compare when we harvested our various grape varieties and how the various harvest numbers were relative to each other.
The 2019 vintage was the first vintage where we had enough fruit to make our wines at Jonathan Edwards with the help of Jon and his crew.
The 2019 vintage is also the first vintage that we were able to sell because it was made at a bonded winery. We were able to get our own winery space in 2022 and were able to bring our wines from Jon's winery to ours in 2022.
Here is a tabulation of the 2019-2025 vintages:

Variety	Harvest Date	Brix	pH	TA g/L	Lbs	Gals
Auxerrois
	9/23/2019	19.6	3.23	7.35	636	50
	9/17/2020	19.0	3.07	7.5	1670	133
	9/28/2021	18.0	3.25	7.5	1638	130
	9/25/2022	20.0	3.16	7.1	3097	248
	10/2/2023	18.6	3.4	5.6	~500	~40
	9/29/2024	19.0	3.5	6.6	1695	135
	9/21/2025	21.0	3.24	5.3	1950	160
Chenin Blanc
	10/14/2019	21.6	3.15	13.5	3930	305
	10/11/2020	23.3	3.09	12.1	8201	655
	10/17-18/2021	20.4	3.17	14.6	6200	496
	10/16-17/2022	21.0	3.07	8.9	4901	392
	10/22/2023	20.0	3.05	8.7	1410	120
	10/20/2024 10/27/2024	20.5 21.5	3.15 3.18	9.5 9.8	1980 1760	160 150
	10/10/2025 10/19/2025	23.0 24.0	3.02 3.05	8.90 8.1	4375 2125	350 170
Chardonnay
	9/28/2019	21.5	3.17	9.4	291	26
	9/24/2020	23.5	3.0	10.0	1136	80
	10/3/2021	20.4	3.28	8.2	2625	210
	10/2/2022	22.5	3.05 - 3.11	7.5 - 8.9	2306	185
	10/5/2023	18.8	3.4	9.9	~500	~40
	9/29/2024	20.4	3.41	9.8	1562	125
	9/28/2025	22.0	3.2	8.0	1950	156
Cabernet Sauvignon
	11/3/2019	19	3.25	11.1	332	30
	10/22/2020	22.4	3.08	10.7	888	80
	10/24/2021	20.1	3.07	10.4	561	45
	10/21/2022	21.0	3.26	-	~1300	104
	10/31/2023	18.8	3.15	10.4	369	30
	10/31/2024	22.0	3.30	9.9	120	9.6
	10/24/2025	23.0	3.13	7.8	312	25
Cabernet Franc
	10/26/2019	23	3.23	11.3	377	32
	10/22/2020	23.3	3.27	11.3	872	80
	10/24/2021	19.8	3.20	7.4	402	32
	10/21/2022	22.0	3.27	-	~1200	96
	10/31/2023	20.4	3.24	7.9	287	23
	10/31/2024	25.0	3.50	8.2	250	20
	10/26/2025	25.0	3.16	6.7	375	30
Barbera
	10/21/2022	22.5	3.00	-	~600	48
	10/31/2024	23.4	3.16	19.7	NA	NA
	10/26/2025	25.5	3.00	10.2	438	35

The year-by-year comparison is helpful because it let's us understand how the current vintage compares with the other vintages and how the year itself affected the numbers that we monitor such as the Brix, pH and titratable acids. It is also a reflection on how many pounds were were able to harvest which gives us a mental reminder of how the weather conditions affected the harvest.

Making a Sparkling Chenin Blanc

One of the nice things about having a space that we call our winery is the ability to work with our wines in our own way. This year, we are getting back to making a sparkling Chenin Blanc, something that we did in our basement in 2017. At that time, we were making pétillant naturel also called pet nat for short, which is the ancestral method of making sparkling wine.
This year, we thought we would try to make a sparkling wine in the bottle with disgorgement of the lees. In order to do that, we had to "catch" our fermenting Chenin at the right level of Brix, which is our case was 2^o.
On October 27, the fermentation looked like the bottom photo. We were able to tap off 3 cases of Chenin Blanc using the sampling valve.

My husband purchased some bidules to insert into the bottle before sealing the bottle with a crown cap.

A sugar concentration of 2.4% w/v is enough to produce 7 atm pressure in the sparkling wine bottles, which generally will withstand 8 atm pressure.¹ The method that we will be trying is still along the lines of a pétillant naturel but we hope to remove the dead yeast cells at the end of the process by concentrating it into the bidule, riddling and disgorging.
References:
1. K.H. SteinKraus, Encyclopedia of Microbiology (Third Edition), Pages 138-143, Cornell University Press, 17 February 2009.

Vintage 2025: Red Harvest

This past weekend, we harvested our 6 rows of red grapes. We wanted to test the concept with our Cabernet Sauvignon and asked two of our friends, Barry and Niall to help us with the harvest. We started at 9 a.m. on Friday, October 24, by raising the nets and then began harvesting the Cabernet Sauvignon. Three of us harvested the 2 rows in 90 minutes. Truth be told, the red grapes are easier to see and they are rot free so harvesting is easier.

We borrowed our friend's crusher/destemmer and after harvest, Barry and Niall came back to our winery on Taugwonk to help with the destemming of the Cabernet Sauvignon. The Cabernet Sauvignon was not the easiest grape to crush and destem. There were a lot of stem bits that we had to remove so it went a little slowly. However, we were done by 2 p.m.
Having tested the moving parts of harvest and crush, we sent out a call to our friends if they would like to help us with harvesting the remaining four rows of red grapes on Sunday, October 26. Our friends answered the SOS and came out to help us with raising the nets at 9 a.m. Barry was the first person there taking off the clothespins with my husband and documenting the process with his stealth glasses-cam. Michael and Elizabeth came and knowing our process helped our new harvesters, Colin and Tulie with how to raise the nets. Geoff, Laurie, Kathy, Mia and Niall made quick work of the net raising.

Many hands make light work and the harvest of the Cabernet Franc and the Barbera finished at 11 a.m.

We even had time for a leisurely lunch before heading off to our winery located on Taugwonk Spur for the destemming and the crushing of the harvest.

Geoff, Mia, Tulie and Colin joined us at the winery for the destemming and crushing of the Barbera and the Cabernet Franc. Luckily for us, the Barbera with it's large grapes and the Cabernet Franc were not as difficult to destem and crush as the Cabernet Sauvignon.

Our red grapes are still in recovery mode from the spring frost in 2023 and the bad case of downy that affected the leaves and therefore ripening in 2024. We had a good harvest, enough to make a few cases of red wine. The Brix on the reds reflected the stellar ripening year that 2025 has been. Tulie helped my husband collect the juice and we tested the Brix with the hydrometer.

These are the numbers for the red grapes:

Variety	Brix	pH	TA
Cabernet Sauvignon	23.0	3.13	7.8 g/L
Cabernet Franc	25.0	3.16	6.7 g/L
Barbera	25.5	3.0	10.2 g/L

We want to thank everyone who came to help us harvest our 2025 Vintage! Aloha and Mahalo!