We are focused on harvesting right now. When the grapes are ready, we don’t do anything else until they are harvested. We are machine harvesting most grapes and we start at 3 A.M. to get the grapes when they are at their coolest. In our Foch vineyard at Newport Lane, our oldest vineyard, we had to hand-harvest because the vines and the trellis were in very poor shape.
So, how do we tell if the grapes are ready. We go out in the vineyard and we pick 50 individual grapes in as random a sample as we can. We will actually take one grape from this vine, walk 50 feet and take another, etc. so that our sample is drawn from the entire vineyard and is not concentrated on one convenient vine. The grapes are put in a plastic bag and taken to the winemaker who crushes the grapes in the bag and then removes the juice. She first measures for sugar and then uses a titrator to measure for total acidity and pH.
The first grape to be harvested was Brianna. Then we harvested Edelweiss, LaCrosse, and more Brianna at Maple Woods. After the Foch, we will harvest Marquette, Sabrevois, and then whatever ripens next. Our grapes are later than usual this year.
