Winery update

Hey all,

Upcoming winery events (working events, not the fun kind):

Villard Blanc - Joe will be picking and delivering his Villard Blanc today. Expecting delivery by late afternoon. Original harvest estimate was for around 1 ton. We should press it tonight unless we want to chill the fruit overnight (can be good thing to do) and press tomorrow (but I'm not available today until 6 pm and 4 pm on Thursday). Plan is: press - settle 24 hrs - rack - inoculate.

Chambourcin - Doug brought 9 lugs over yesterday - sitting in the chiller (our barrel room now has full cooling capability). He plans to have the rest harvested today and delivered this evening. Might have about 1500 lbs. This will get crushed and put into a bin for fermentation. I would rather not chill these grapes too much since it would take a long time to get the crushed grapes back up to temperature to get the fermentation kicked-off. Would be ok to let them sit for a day on the 60-65 deg production floor.

Today I won't be able to get to the winey until about 6 pm (trying to reschedule other things to get there earlier if I can). Thursday I would be able to get there around my usual time of 4 pm.

Chardonnay - It is looking like the Chardonnay will be picked Saturday - if it comes in too late in the afternoon or evening, we should let it chill overnight and then press it Sunday morning (ideally it is best to let the whites chill down to 50-55 before pressing anyway). Two tons would require two press loads. With a 2-3 hrs pressing time per press load and at least an hour cleanup time, I don't really want to be there until midnight or later. We plan to barrel ferment the Chardonnay.

The two barrels of Chancellor will need racking sometime over the next few days - time permitting.

Btw, we now have 592 gallons of Vidal ferementing away.

Pat