The last of our Pinot vineyards was picked today; Tanuda Ridge vineyard brought in 3 tons of fruit looking very good.
Temperatures have been cooler since Sept. 7th with morning and evening fog and sun coming up to warm us up by 11am. We have been continuing with our three punch downs daily.
Our 1st grapes of 2008 arrive early monday morning. Ruxton Vineyard was picked at an average of 25 brix, 8 tons arrived to be stored in the cold room over night, sorted tuesday morning. We left a few rows at Ruxton unpicked that were not quite ripe & plan to follow up in the next week.
Our weather patterns have been varied; Several hot days with a few sporatic cool days in the mid 70's. There has been little fog this month, no precipitation and little cloud. The average temperature for August has been in the 90's which is above average.
We have been watching the vineyards very closely expecting to be picking earlier this year.
The worst frosts recorded in over 30 years. Several friends lost many vines to frost. Thus far we have been spared, the knights valley gamay is the only vineyard that had frost damage. We will not know exactly how much loss until the grapes are picked later this year. We will most likely not produce a 2008 chardonnay due to grapes damaged by frost.