What's a Farmer To Do?

I have a few more weeks left before I go back into the vineyard to start the winter pruning. Tim does the wine-making, Kathryn does the marketing. So, what am I supposed to write in the blog when I have no farming to report? Nothing. I'll just post pictures from the past couple of months. The first is Tim pitching the grapes into the crusher/destemmer. The second is of the juice collecting in the tray after being squeezed by the press. I love watching the running juice and listening to it splashing into the tray. It seems like magic to me even though I know there was lots of work that went on before this. After all, it is the end result of my grape farming.
Oops! I guess I did find something to write about!

Love is Blind

It’s over. Thanks to the assistance of five volunteers and new friends last week we harvested the last of our own fruit – Tempranillo. It is now pressed and resting in a big tank.The crush this year, which began at the end of August, was memorable.




My second trip to Willcox to pick up fruit from Arizona Stronhold Vineyards and Sweet Sunrise Vineyards resulted in a load of two tons of Chardonnay and two tons of Malvasia. Luckily driving out of the vineyard Peter noticed a flat tire on the trailer – fortunate because I was able to repair it in “downtown” Willcox. Unfortunately while tooling along I-10 at about 65 mph, the truck totally blew a rear tire. It took me about 2 hours to change the tire – a rather complex process considering I had a ton of grapes in the bed of the truck and three tons under tow on the trailer and interstate traffic was whizzing along past me at dizzying speeds.









When I finally got back to the winery at 3 pm, crush began – not ending until 3 am the next morning, even with Joan’s help loading the press. To bed at 3am and up at 6 am to get the next load of Syrah. Another flat tire, 4 new truck tires, a new trailer tire, crazy moments under tow battling semi-trucks at 70mph. Repeat for Sangiovese Clone 2, Nebbiolo, Syrah from AZ Stronghold, and the Sangiovese Brunello clone. 

I’m glad it’s over. It was much more logistically easy to harvest our own Syrah, Tempranillo and little bits of Mourvedre, Riesling and Zinfandel.

The fruit looks lovely, the young wine is yummy. Picking, crushing, pressing, racking, cleaning, pumping, tasting, worrying. Repeat as needed. That’s harvest. Romantic – on the big screen maybe. In reality – for about half a day. Do I love it? Yes

We're Bottling!

The last couple of weeks have been busy for us. We are bottling the 2007 wines and crushing this year's harvest. We've had some return volunteers and some new ones helping. A couple of weeks ago Karla, Alicia, Mark and, of course, our daughter, Kathryn, bottled the Syrah. This past Sunday Casey and Amber Polivchak spent one of their rare days off bottling the Sangiovese. We finished that bottling early so they also labeled some Malvasia. Tim and I feel very fortunate to have so many wonderful people involved in the workings of our winery.