Final Harvest

 The Fall colors are in full swing and we are finally harvesting the Syrah.

Typically we harvest in September, But this year the fruit was slow to reach the final maturation. We wanted to let the sugar content get a little higher but the grapes were starting to shut down for the winter. So we needed to harvest.

 Here you can see that the leaves are turning colors and dropping. The vines are getting ready to shut down for Winter.

The pickers made quick work of the Harvest, they picked about 10 Tons of grapes in one day.

Here are a few bin loads ready to take to the winery. All in all we had 20 bins full of grapes. 

 Here is the first load heading to the winery, 10 bins, approximately 5 tons (10,000 pounds) of Grapes.

 For Syrah, the winemaker likes to "Whole Bunch Ferment" So we do not crush the grapes like we did with the Rose. 2 Bins weighing approximately 1 ton get loaded into plastic fermenters. The fermenters will be covered and the grapes will be allowed to ferment as is. I am not a winemaker so don't know all the benefits but it is a more traditional way of fermenting that was used before de-stemeres and large presses were available. Here is one of the fermenters full of grapes.

 Harvest is a very long day and filled with work. To wrap it up as the sun was setting I needed to clean all 20 bins and get them ready for storage. It was a long and eventful day.