Last Thursday early in the cool morning this year’s harvest began. First to be picked were Chardonnay grapes from our vineyard. Jim Milone our winemaker determined that a brix between 17 and 19, was absolutely perfect for this year’s sparkling wine. We hand harvested the grapes and rushed them to our neighboring processing facility for whole cluster pressing to extract the cleanest free run juice. It will ferment for two weeks, clarify and all cold settle before primary bottling. This will insure citrusy and floral characteristics in the cuvee. It will remain in tirage for about two years before the final phase begins. As we work with the 09 Sparkling wine, we are also disgorging the eagerly awaited ’06 our first but surely not our last sparkling wine. As we conducted our in-house final tastings, we concluded that our preference is for a very dry and yeasty sparkling wine. We are really looking forward to its release during the Hopland Passport Weekend in late October.
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