Harvest Journal 2024
Welcome to the most exciting time of the winemaking year: Harvest! Follow along with us as we share the thrills and spills (hopefully, not too many of those!) of a Napa Valley harvest!
9/27/2024
Our two-and-a-half blocks (15A, 15B and the small block 11) of Petit Verdot, coming in today, will be the last grapes picked for our own wines, bringing our harvest to a close in one month+ one day! What a whirlwind! Two blocks of Cabernet Sauvignon, 8B and 17, remain to be picked for our grape customers, as they are ready for them. There will still be lots of action at the winery for the next month, as we shepherd these late varieties through fermentation and extended maceration and into barrels. The smell of newly-fermenting wine fills the air!
WEEK OF 9/23/2024: CABERNET ALL DAY
It's hard to believe we are in the home stretch! This week started, and will finish, with Cabernet Sauvignon, the grape that makes up just over thirty percent of Hendry plantings. On Wednesday, 9/25, we continued with the "old blocks" of Block 8 Cabernet: C, D, E and F, planted in 1974. Chardonnay is all barreled down and bubbling away, and Pinot and Primitivo are in barrel, too, upstairs in the warmer temps of Bay 4 to foster malolactic fermentation. (No malolactic on the whites, just the reds, at Hendry.) The leaves in the lower vineyard are already turning golden as the harvested vines pull back their resources in preparation for a well-deserved rest.
WEEK OF 9/16/2024: TODAY WE REST...TOMORROW, WE PICK AGAIN!
