2019 Harvest and Crush

In spite of the challenges with import procedures, government, weather, and scheduling, the grapes arrived without incident on October 17th. 

The Cabernet Sauvignon fruit looked and tasted superb, and the test results showed good maturity, perfect sugar, and just the right amount of acidity.  Crush proceeded efficiently, and we began fermentation two days later.  Last Sunday, we concluded this important phase of the vintage by pressing the grape juice off of the skins, a process and a technology that dates back several thousand years (and no, no feet were used!).

What follows are a few pictures of the events up to pressing. 

The first tote of grapes delivered.  The shipment was loaded in Washington on the day of picking, refrigerated to near 2 degrees, and shipped to Surrey.  The totes were then transferred to a different truck with the tailgate service needed for delivery at our house. 

Because it was raining, we put all three totes in the garage.  This location offered the added benefit of making the crush proceed more efficiently.

Beautiful Cabernet Sauvignon fruit.

Preparing the garage for crush.  The white device on the left is a crusher-destemmer.  It is designed to crack the berries and remove the stems of each cluster.

Club members Darin, Brent and Bob

Grape clusters are transferred to buckets with any leaves or other removed first.

A 200L stainless steel fermenting tank is filled about three fourths to the top.

Fermenters are covered to keep out fruit flies.  In about 48 hours, cultured yeast will be inoculated (added) to each tank.

Record keeping is very important :-)