Picking, picking, picking!
Harvest 2022 has officially begun!
Our team put boots (Blundstones in most cases, flip-flops in Tyler's) on the soil at Canyonview Vineyard September 21st to pick the first spoils of the season -- beautiful, healthy clusters of Chardonnay for our club-exclusive Blanc de Blanc.
Following a sticky, early start to the day, we returned to the crush pad with full bins, eager to extract the first few drops of liquid gold. As is tradition, a bottle of the current vintage bubbles was sabred to christen the press (which Tyler did sitting atop the machine - a normal place for a person to be this time of year). He filled the cup of each team member to toast a successful season. This omen of well wishes for a bountiful crop is a brief moment of joy before the hard work begins (especially for Andy, our cellarhand/ harvest intern who is literally crushin' it.)
As of October 6th, the juice for our all of sparkling wines have been pressed and moved into barrels for the first of their two fermentations. The wines are alive!
At this time of year, everything in the cellar looks like a cool science experiment. Jordan has beakers full of sample wines (made from grapes pending picking dates) of varying colours and textures, each barrel is affixed with a doohickey called an "airlock", which are visual cues of an active fermentation; and there are hoses running every which way along the crushpad that once was solely a spot to sip during the tasting season mere days before.
This growing season was a nail-biter. With a very damp June, and sweat-bowl July, and a smokey mid-August, every viticulturist in the valley has been nervous of delayed ripening times. Jordan expressed to a guest in late August, "by the 24th of this month last year, all of our sparkling wines were already in barrel." If the math is correct, that puts us about 4.5 weeks behind our normal picking time.
We've been fortunate to have a late summer set deep into September, with favourable growing days to help finish the ripening of our grapes.
Club members and guests who visited for tastings throughout the year, and friends from far and wide have come to join us in the rows for a taste of harvest life. The harvest continues.