Note: We are following the 2011 grape harvest through the writings of several Niagara insiders. This is the second post from William Roman at Rosewood Estate, who not only has grapes to worry about but also honey that he uses in the various meads that are made there. This is Part VIII in our series.
By WILLIAM ROMAN, Operations Manager, Rosewood Estate Winery and Meadery
Sept 25, 2011
Rosewood’s first 2011 grape picks!
The past two weeks have been pretty busy for the Rosewood crew! Harvest has started but has yet to hit high gear – we are giving the grapes some time to hang on the vines to ripen more and hope Mother Nature complies.
Mother Nature has not been kind to the grape growers and producers in Niagara so far this September with many days of rain. This has slowed down the ripening of the grapes, and for several ‘thinskinned’ varieties (think Pinot Noir and Chardonnay) has caused a lot of ‘breakdown’ (rot) issues. This is proving to be a challenging harvest period thus far with lots of rain and the temperatures fluctuating drastically between the midday highs and earlymorning lows.
I am keeping my fingers crossed for some better weather — drier then what most of September has proven to be, many more days of sunlight and that the first fall frost is delayed by several more weeks/months.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011: Our harvesting crew picked, sorted and processed the Pinot Noir off our Estate Vineyard – the crew did a great job sorting the clusters out in the field, which helped us when it came time to sort the grapes.
We began by dumping the grapes on a shaker table, then feeding the beautiful Pinot Noir clusters into our special EuroSelect Destemmer.
This destemmer is a great piece of equipment, which allows us to destem all the grapes while leaving them completely intact. This is an important step in Rosewood’s winemaking approach as it allows us to practice “whole berry fermentation” – which allows for decreased bitterness and harsh phenolic extraction from the grapes/skins and seeds (as we are not crushing them). This ultimately aids in the production of Rosewood’s premium wines.
Today’s was not a large run, with the estate Pinot being a mere 0.40 of an acre. Everything was sorted into a blue plastic tote, washed and then squeegeed. This wrapped up the first official day of harvest for Rosewood.
Sunday, September 25, 2011: This was an exciting day as we were harvesting the first sets of grapes that we’ve ever seen come off the second Rosewood vineyard – the Long Rows Vineyard.
As the first batch of grapes arrived we began sorting the grapes – the Gewürztraminer looked very good! We are very happy with the result off this young vineyard. The vines are only three years old, and yet are producing really well balanced and tasty grapes. We are still unsure what will be done with these grapes — if there will be a straight varietal Gewürztraminer or a
Gewürztraminer and honey pyment produced. Only time will tell.
For the time being the Gewürztraminer is being kept cold inside the winery, sitting in a tote with its berries to encourage some flavour and color extraction.
Later that afternoon some 777 Pinot Noir clone grape’s arrived that had been picked from Wismer’s field. This clone has particularly large pinot noir berries, and also has a darker hue of blueishpurple found in its skin.
I am excited to be working with this clone for the first time, simply based on its skin color – color extraction should be great in this batch!
The fruit came in very clean and at a good sugar level of 21.2 brix, considering the weather we’ve had in September. The clusters were all then sorted and placed into totes. After a long day of sorting through grapes on Sunday the harvest team all enjoyed a glass of some great B.C. bubbly from Blue Mountain Vineyards and Cellars. It was a great way to finish after a long, warm and sunny day.
Up Next?
We will now be monitoring the grapes that have been sorted daily – to see if there are any spontaneous fermentations or issues with VA (volatile acidity).
• As well as continuing to perform field samples of the grapes that are still on the vines.
• Punchdowns are performed twice daily to help the extraction levels prior to fermentation.
• We will be pressing the Gewurztraminer Tuesday morning (Sept 27)
• No official date scheduled to pick the next set of grapes.
• Let’s all pray for a little bit more co-operation from mother nature and hope she let’s us get through this harvest before any problems arise with early fall frosts.
Cheers to all,
William Roman
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