A real Labor Day weekend

Happy Labor Day, a wee bit late. Please forgive my tardy acknowledgement of the holiday; it is just that we have been a bit covered up this past weekend. Over the weekend, we bottled the rest of our 2011 Coming Home and our one barrel of 2012 [as yet un-named] Montepulciano, and we crushed our first red fruit of the year when we received 2.5 tons of Tempranillo on Sunday afternoon.

Dianne was working from Atlanta a couple of weeks ago, and she brought a cough and congestion home with her. I told her that it would be ok if she did not share it with me, but being the generous soul that she is, she simply could not keep something that good to herself. So now I am coughing and congested and basically miserable.

On Friday evening, I checked sugar and acid levels on the Sangiovese and the Cabernet Sauvignon, our earliest and latest-ish ripening varieties, respectively. Sugars, or more accurately, soluble solids are still pretty low [~15 Brix for both] , pH is still down around 2.8 or lower, and TA was 13g/L on the Sangiovese and 20g/L on the Cab, which means they are both still pretty tart. I am estimating a harvest in our vineyard that begins around 20 Sept for the Sangiovese and concludes in the first or second week of Oct for the Cabernet Sauvignon and Montepulciano.

Even with all of the rain that we have seen this year, the fruit is in very good shape. The acids are a little higher than previous years, but that is to be expected with the cool growing season. Sugars will probably be a little lower too, but if we can catch a break from the rain for just a couple of weeks, we should have some high quality fruit.