Harvest is in full gear here in Sonoma. At the winery we have about 15% of our fruit in already and our first fruit from Amber Ridge has finished its cold soak and fermentation is just kicking into gear. The berries have been very small this year, giving the juice an amazingly rich deep purple hue after cold soak (because of the high skin to juice ratio). These are going to be some dark pinots!
Above are some samples of Keefer Ranch. We get six different Pinot Noir clones from Keefer Ranch - 115, 2A, 23, 667, 777 and Pommard. Clone 23 is my favorite - up here in Sonoma it gives the wine a beautiful green apple tartness. Just spectacular. We sampled the Keefer juice this week and the flavor is just about to pop - we should see the fruit in the winery this week just as it hits its peak. What a great time of year!
1 comment:
Hi Andrew - Bala Shetty just introduced me to your blogspot.
Hey well done on changing your life to do wine stuff -- we are in the process of doing it now (although we saw the light at a later stage than you, or maybe it was the requirement of more cash that kept us at work!).
We wanted to set up our own vineyard and did so in Central Otago in New Zealand - in the world's most spectacular site as the vineyard overlooks a lake and is on multiple levels. Our goal is produce New Zealand's very best Pinot Noir and we set out with a 'no compromise' approach. Things are going great and our first commercial harvest is April next year when our baby vines will be 4 years ol.
We have a 140 acre estate with 55 acres planted now and another 10 acres to be planted in a just a few weeks time. 2/3rds of our vineyard is Pinot Noir and the remainder is planted in Pinot Gris, Riesling, Gewurztraminer and a little Sav Blanc.
It's been a long and expensive journey so far - but absolutely worth it.
Bala knows about our dream very well -- but we haven't managed to get him down to NZ as yet to see the vineyard.
We know Bala as we live in Singapore and I commute between Singapore and NZ. Once we are producing we plan to spend Dec to harvest in NZ and then the rest of the year based in Singapore as our primary markets will be Asia (esp Japan) and the US.
I noticed you mentioned Felton Rd as one of your favourite Pinots - it's great, and there are so many more too. We're off to a Quartz Reef wine dinner tonight which I'm looking forward to as Rudy Bauer makes a stunning Central Otago Pinot Noir -- and his vineyard is very close to ours.
Anyway, good luck with your 'learning curve'. Perhaps the future world's best Pinot Noir maker should meet the future world's best Pinot Noir vineyard!
Bye for now
Misha
Misha's Vineyard
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