The Harvest!

posted on: Friday, October 07, 2011 by: parallel44

The Harvest and More!

It took us 3 days and about 22 people each day to bring in the grapes.  Overall the weather was great (except for Fri Sept 30 where it was sometimes cold and rainy and sometimes just cold!)  We were lucky to again have customers and friends volunteer to pick grapes.  This year was a little more work than in the past - we harvested almost 3 times more grapes than in the past year.  We were averaging about 5+ tons of grapes per acre!  Without the work of our volunteers this would not have been possible. THANK YOU!

Also, our new crusher-destemmer and our new press made processing our grapes soooooo easy compared to in the past.  The must from our crusher-destemmer was easliy pumped into our tanks and our press allowed us to do whole cluster pressing for our whites (which we believe will make our wines extra tasty) -- get ready friends for even better wines from the 2011 vintage! 

Looking back at the season -- we made it thru a very stressful growing season this year.  The year started out slow and cold - remember those cold June days... We lucked out with the warm days of July and August.  We also missed hail storms, wind storms and an early frost at our location... All this luck and a few prayers (actually a lot of prayers) helped us bring in the best harvest yet!

We are so excited to be on our way to producing more of your favoroite Frozen Tundra Wines!!!!  We sold out of our Tundra Red recently -- and are now excited to have it back in production, along with many of your other favorites.

As I write this I am looking out over our patio, watching customers sip wine while enjoying the Fall view.  What a day!  This unseasonably warm Oct is so well deserved.  For those of you heading out this weekend, you might find me on the patio enjoying a glass of wine (in between tours and all the other activity in our tasting room.)  Hope to see you out at the winery, enjoying.... A Taste of the Tundra!   Maria