Why I love harvest ❤️

Harvest is so many things all at once - exhilarating, tactile, aromatic, rewarding, and exhausting! We’ve worked all year to grow these exceptional grapes; some come to Côte Bonneville, others go around the state to Owen Roe, Betz, DeLille, Rasa, Va Piano, Pursued by Bear, Kevin White Winery, and more. Picking is the culmination of the growing season; a job well done for our vineyard team. All our winemakers make their own picking decisions; some prefer to pick earlier, some like wait. I taste the grapes in each set of rows repeatedly, watching chemistry and evaluating flavors. Wine grapes are so flavorful and sweet on the vines!

The end of the growing season transitions into the beginning of the winemaking process. This is where the sensory overload really kicks in! Starting batches of yeast, monitoring the heat of each fermentor, tasting ferments multiple times per day, and all the other myriad of details that are measured in sensory inputs as much as by a thermometer or hydrometer. The changes each day are amazing to watch.