Today our harvest season begins for Dacalier. We will be bringing in 3 tons of grenache from the Tejada Vineyard in Lake County for rosé. The sugars will be right around 22 brix and the flavors are unbelievable. Grenache loves the heat, and we got more than we bargained for in September. The fruit is ripe and ready for rosé, but it isn’t quite ready for to be pulled for grenache noir. We plan to let the remaining 4-5 tons hang for a couple more weeks.
Our Mourvedre is at a higher elevation in Lake Cty called Shannon Ridge. This fruit is taking its sweet time and we may be picking for rosé in November…(Boy i hope not). We dropped fruit and pulled leaves in the last couple of weeks with hopes that the sugars would rise and the flavors would begin to appear.
Our viognier comes from Clarksburg AVA. Its a beautiful Viognier with tropical notes galore on the nose and palate. We will bring in 5 tons of Viognier this year with a two pronged goal of a white blend as well as grenache/viognier co-fermentation project similar to a French Côte-Rôtie. We tried this last year and that barrel clearly stands out from the rest of the grenache we brought in last year.
We have two other lots of fruit that will be coming in for 2010. Black Sears Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon at the top of Howell Mountain as well as Beckstoffer/George III Cabernet Sauvignon in Rutherford. We will be bringing in a ton of each for special project that won’t be seen until 2013, so stay tuned for more on this.
This is always the most stressful and honestly the most fun time of year for us. We plan to keep you updated here on the blog as well as our Dacalier Fan Page on FaceBook, so please sign up and stay tuned.
Cheers,
dave
