2009 Harvest Underway!

Well, it started yesterday with Cabernet Franc for our sparkling rosé but, as usual, not without a challenge. What a day. We knew it would be a challenge because we had to pick and press the juice on the same day to make a pale salmon coloured wine and the 2008 vintage is so popular that we wanted to double the quantity this year. So, up early to set everything up and picking started around 8am. All went well until about 9am when the water suddenly went off. Several frantic calls by Jack to the french water board revealed it was a planned maintenance period that apprently had been notified at the local Mairie. Great. We decided to plough on – had no real choice, the press was already 1/3 full! Remarkably the day went well but things got stickier and stickier and by the end of the day you couldn’t walk anywhere or touch anything that wasn’t completely yucky. 7pm came and went, we’d finished harvesting, the juice was pressed and still no water. On the plus side, the juice is great – good volume, acidity seems good and just the right level of sugar for sparkling wine (big relief). Problem now was that we needed to chill the wine to clarify the juice and I needed to sterilise the chiller unit. Ended up filling lots of containers of water at a neighbours just down the road – but eventually it worked. Long day but all ok in the end. Need to clean everything up tomorrow, looks like we’ll be picking the sauvignon on Wednesday!