We have now broken the back of this year’s harvest, indeed, we are now moving toward the last couple of vineyard locations. In the meantime, work is already well underway in the cellar itself as we chill the fresh grape must to help it settle. After a day or two when all the impurities have fallen to the bottom of the tanks then the juice can then be moved, or ‘racked’ into clean tanks ready for fermentation.

In a way Monday turned out to be quite similar to Sunday – smooth and uneventful. As always, once we start picking we like to continue without stopping and so, quite understandably, when we have rain looming on the horizon we do try to step up the pace as much as we can. The weather radar still showed rain and some thunder moving towards our area, and we were anticipating that it might arrive with us at around 5pm (when we would normally stop picking at 7pm). 5pm came and went, and although we could see dark skies on two sides of the bodega, we somehow managed to escape, as did our vineyards. We heard later that it had been raining within 10km of our location, but luckily we didn’t see a drop….. until about 10pm when there were quite literally just a few spots of rain, but then not even enough to wet the ground. In any event, by that time, all grapes were safely inside and already passing through our presses.

Today’s photo shows our harvest cases drying in the sun. Once they are emptied they are immediately washed, ready to be used again. It is really important to wash the cases as soon as they have been emptied, as they inevitably have a little juice inside, which, if left to dry, becomes hard and difficult to remove, almost like a layer of nail varnish!