Harvesting Merlot - Thursday, 5th of March

Finally!!!!! Red grapes in the cellar. We started Monday with a vineyard in its first year of production. On Tuesday we harvested the "so called" stressed areas in our block 6 and this year parts of block 3 with it. We do this in order to secure better uniformity in ripeness when the grapes are harvested. Usually the stressed parts will reach high sugar level at an earlier stage.

These grapes would not be able to reach phenolic ripeness as we would like them so we rather harvest in order to protect the vine from stressing further and to get the grapes in at TA and pH levels that is still sufficient to make good wine. We will pick the balance of this block, which still now has a very green and lovely canopy of leafs, early next week when it reaches the maturity we require.

Today is a scorching hot day (38-40°C) and we will be harvesting Merlot grapes from the Simonsberg area. We do this to have some diversity of flavour in the cellar with the separate tanks of Merlot that we make. This vineyard is slightly older than ours and is situated on soils with a higher clay contents and no significant visible stones. The flavour on this wine reminds of more intense black cherries and ripe plums.

Tomorrow we will be harvesting some grapes from block 3 and in the end the balance of block 6 that we thought we will only need to harvest next week. This heat is not good for any grapes so better get them in the cellar!


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