Vintage 2021: Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc Harvest

Our last harvest of the year was on Sunday, October 24 when we harvested our Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Our friends came once again to raise the netting and began harvesting around 9 a.m. The day was a cool but a beautiful one with sunshine and blue skies, a typical fall day in New England.
We had some new harvesters among our crew, including the cutest harvester, 6-1/2 year old Phoebe, who worked for 2 hours and said that she could have kept on going! That's the kind of crew we can really appreciate!
The harvest was a modest one, compared to what we had in our 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc harvest. But the grapes were clean!
The harvested grapes all fit in their respective half-ton bins and were transported to our off vineyard facility to spend the night.

The grapes were transported to Jonathan Edwards Winery in the early afternoon where their destemmer made quick work of the harvest and the destemmed grapes went into the cleaned half-ton bins for cold maceration, to extract color.
It was very nice to know that all of our grapes were finally harvested and beginning their journey from juice to wine!

A Little Levity During the Chenin Blanc Harvest

Our first day of the Chenin Blanc harvest was on Sunday, October 17. Our friends come early to help us raise the netting and put down the lugs for harvest in advance of the many people who come to help us harvest.
At the end of this first day of harvesting Chenin Blanc, our friend came up to me and showed me his Apple tracking miles walked! Since he was one of the people raising the netting, he got a lot of miles that day.
I thought it was blog worthy. He really did a lot of walking that day and the Apple tracking map showed how long and straight our rows are and where the 10 rows of Chenin Blanc are.
We always talk about cross-training in the vineyard. My husband has a word for it: VitiFit!

Vintage 2021: Chenin Blanc Harvest - Part 2

Part 1 of the Chenin Blanc Harvest blogpost brought us up to Monday, October 18, when the grapes had been destemmed and crushed and the juice safely put into a tank for cold settling.
We had a few days of rest that we called PHADD (post-harvest adrenaline deficit disorder, pronounced "fad") where our batteries were pegging on empty and we needed a recharge.
We were back at Jonathan Edwards Winery on Thursday, October 21 to rack the cold settled juice into another tank in preparation for inoculation. My husband hooked up the hoses to the pump and then we cleaned the hoses, as instructed by Jon, making sure that there was no residual water in the hoses. We then hooked up the hoses to the tank with the juice and then to the receiving tank which was nearby. The racking took about 45 minutes for approximately 500 gallons of juice, after which we were able to open the manway to look inside.
Here is a photo of my husband getting the last of the clear juice from the bottom of the settling tank. After getting as much juice as we could, we believe that 15 gallons of yuck went down the drain.

Since the juice was at 54 degrees, we decided to let it warm up overnight and came back on Friday, October 22 to rehydrate our yeast, QA23 and temper it. It's difficult to get our heads around 480 grams of yeast, because we have been dealing with 5 gram packets for the longest time. Last year, I thought that a 2 gallon bucket would work for the rehydration and tempering and I ran into trouble right from the start!
For 480 grams of yeast, rehydration recommends 4.8 liters of water at 100 degrees F. The rehydration takes around 20 minutes and then tempering with juice takes another 20 minutes.

In the picture above, you can see the clarity of the Chenin Blanc juice. The middle photo is the tempered yeast, foaming close to the top of the 5 gallon bucket! Jay took it to the top of the tank to inoculate the Chenin Blanc for us so now we cross our fingers and wait for fermentation!

Vintage 2021: Chenin Blanc Harvest - Part 1

In trying to decide on a harvest day, and knowing that our grapes were almost a week behind the 2020 harvest date, we gathered representative samples from our Chenin Blanc clone 982 and FPS-1 on October 9 and 10. We tested the Brix, pH and TA and came up with these numbers:

Variety	Date of Testing	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Chenin Blanc clone 982	October 9, 2021	973 g	530 mL	18.6	2.95	11.80 g/L
Chenin Blanc clone FPS-1	October 10, 2021	302 g	160 mL	19.3	3.05	9.5 g/L

Looking at those numbers above and looking at the week ahead, we decided to cross our fingers and hope that the nice weather during the coming week would bring the Brix levels up and the total acidity (TA) down. We were indeed fortunate since the temperatures during October 11-17 were in the mid to high 70's, sunny and warm.
We scheduled our harvest for Sunday, October 17 and Monday, October 18, taking in to account feedback from our crew that splitting the harvest of our major variety, Chenin Blanc, over two days would be a good thing.
Here is a photo of a handful of our crew busy at harvesting:

Another change in our operation was to pick up the filled lugs with the t-bins and deploy the lugs into the other rows so that our crew was never looking for an empty lug.

Initially, we decided to harvest 8 of the 17 rows of Chenin Blanc, but the very industrious crew said that "While you have us, use us! Strike while the iron is hot! Let's do a few more rows!" So we decided to harvest 2 more rows of Chenin Blanc and were able to do 10 rows instead of 8 by 2 p.m. we were on a roll and feeling good about how much was accomplished.
The grapes in the lugs were put into the t-bins and there was a total of 7 t-bins to take to Jonathan Edwards Winery. Without going into detail, there was a bit of a snafu with plan A so we deployed plan B with the help of our hunter who called his friend who had a dump trailer that could haul 3 t-bins at a time. Our hunter also had a tarp that could cover the t-bins. My husband put one of the t-bins in his truck so that at the end of the day, there were 6 t-bins on the ground safely covered with a tarp.

On Monday, we had a handful of dedicated people who were determined that we would get the harvest to the winery for pressing. The crew was able to harvest the remaining 7 rows of Chenin Blanc by 2 p.m. and we made the last pressing of the day at Jonathan Edwards Winery. Once at the winery, at the close of the day on Monday, we all breathe a small sigh of relief. Phew!
The following day, on October 18, we were able to get a sample of cold settled juice and got these numbers:

Variety	Date of Testing	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Chenin Blanc total juice after cold settling	October 19, 2021	6200 pounds	496 gallons	20.4	3.17	14.6 g/L

The Brix was now at a good level and the pH and TA are something that we know how to deal with, so alls well that ends well! We want to thank everyone who came on Sunday and Monday to help us harvest our Chenin Blanc and the crew at Jonathan Edwards Winery who are always so kind to us!