Spring time in the vineyard of another drought year. The vineyard irrigation was set 40% below 2021 to try and help our drought situation. Hopefully our 2022 yeild will not suffer too much, the 2021 harvest was 515 pounds.
The ground cover was totally gone even sooner than in 2021. Despite the reduction of water the young grapes are looking very good.
With the grapes looking good we anticipated another Labor Day pick. But Mother Nature decided on a different pick day. On August 18th a test of the sugars was made which was very clear it was time to pick. The actual pick took a couple days to organize and occurred on August 21st. The pick last much longer than expected because the 2022 crop weighed in at 175% of 2021 at 905 pounds with a final brix of 24.5.
These are some images of the picking. Eric and Thais; Nick and Dad(twice)
Processing of our 2022 crop was made easier by the new bladder press hooked up to the hose in the image at the far right. But also made easier with more help Nick, Thais and Eric, middle image. The plastic bins are filled with our harvest that first must be processed by the fire-engine red destemmer. The destemmer image is a full hopper of Safari Creek Chardonnay grapes.
The day before our pick we first had to do some bottling to free up room in the tank for the 2022 vintage. A total of 15 cases were bottled from a barrel containing various red varietals. The red blend was:
- 46% 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon
- 24% 2018 Syrah
- 20% 2018 Petite Syrah
- 10% 2019 Sangiovese
After the bottling a red blend in a stainless steel tank was used to re-fill the barrel. The blend added to the barrel consisted of Zinfandel, Pinotage and Cabernet Franc.
1st image Courtney Bottling; 2nd image Nick bottling; 3rd image Dad assessing the bottling setup.
1st image Barrel-Room bottling activity; 2nd image Kaitlyn corking; 3rd image Eric bottling.
1st image Everyone Corking; 2nd image Thais and Emily labeling bottles; 3rd image Scott and Kaitlyn looking for guidance.
