September 19, 2012. A day that will live in wine making history. Well, at least for a little while.
As you can imagine, I've been closely monitoring the vineyard for ripeness and paying attention to both numbers and physiological factors. The stars came into alignment last Wednesday and we picked both Fincas Alta and Vieja. There were seven of us including Susan, Stacie (my sister) and me.
It was an absolutely beautiful day and everything went smoothly. We took the first load in just after noon and it went right into the fermenter. We're trying a carbonic maceration on about half of the 4000 kilos we harvested. This is a technique that boosts the aromatics and minimizes the tannin. We ended up with 24.3 Brix and a pH of 3.75 in the tank we will conventionally ferment. All things considered, I couldn't be happier. We pressed the tank of garnatxa on Friday. It's down to .3% sugar and will be completely dry in a couple of days. The color is just incredible as you can see from the picture.
Stacie will be here through most of next week and we've been showing her around. This is her first trip to Europe and there's a lot to see. I'll put some highlights of her visit on our next post.