We started picking Edelweiss at 2 a.m. Sunday morning. We put the fruit into refrigerated trucks at the Winery so the grapes were ready and waiting for crush to begin Monday morning. We will be picking Edelweiss every day until it is all made into juice. This year’s harvest of Edelweiss appears to be the biggest we’ve ever had. The individual grapes are large and the bunches are even bigger. We are very short handed in both the vineyard and on the crush pad so people will be moving back and forth to help in any way they can.
At the time this was written on Sunday evening, about 1.5 inches of rain was expected sometime in the next 12–15 hours. While we are normally enthusiastic about rain, grape growers don’t want rain during harvest. The reason is that vines route the rain water directly to the grapes. If the vines get enough rain, the grapes will expand to the point that they split. Then, we have big insect problems. A second problem created by heavy rain is that the vineyard gets muddy and our harvester and tractors really tear up the rows between the vines. A little rain is great. A lot of rain is NOT good.
We will continue to pick samples of all of our other grapes for testing in the cellar.
While our grapes generally mature earlier than grapes in California do for example, they did start the California harvest for grapes that will be used to make sparkling wine. These grapes will all be high in acid. This is one of the requirements for grapes used in making sparkling wine. Most other grapes in California will not be ready for harvest until mid-September.
