Harvest Has Begun!
Harvest has begun!
Winemaking is like the ultimate slow cooking. You only get to make one meal every year and Harvest is making sure your ingredients are ripe and ready for their journey! This is a time of year where preparation meets skill and intuition all at the same time. It is also a time when the winemaker must have his sous chef skills pretty sharp!
As a small boutique winery, Spicy Vines’ vineyard sites are well focused and lots are fairly small. We like them that way, as a lot of care and attention is given to each wine lot as they are brought in and begin their process of becoming finished wine.
We're gitty for that Pine Mountain fruit
This year at Spicy Vines, we are most excited about the fruit we bring in from Pine-Mountain. Pine-Mountain is a mountain that sits in the Pine Mountain-Cloverdale Peak AVA and spans both Alexander Valley and Mendocino County major appellations. This 3,000 ft. elevation mountain is home to some of our favorite mountain fruit that we pull in each year.
“The Petite Verdot and Cab Franc berries are full of flavor and tasting yummy-luscious,” says Doug Hackett, winemaker. The skins on these grapes are quite thick each year due to the extreme mountain temperatures that fruit is exposed to at such elevations. These thick skins later lend to full and complex flavors in the wines produced off the Pine Mountain vineyards. If you ever have an opportunity to try our Sunnydaze Sauvignon Blanc or Cabernet Franc, you will know this to be true!
Taste a piece of history from Burnett Vineyards
Burnett Vineyards is another favorite vineyard of ours. This 95-year old vineyard is dry farmed, meaning it is so old that the root stick literally taps into its own water source! This vineyard has quite a bit of history to it as well and remains one of the oldest planed vineyards in the Dry Creek Valley that has not been re-planted. If you have ever tasted our Violet Rose Rosé, 2015 EDGE Red Blend or newest release, 2015 Zin Master Zinfandel, you have had a wine from Burnett Vineyards.
Overall, we have seen a very warm summer in 2018. July was the hottest month on record ever recorded in California and with global warming, we can expect this to be more of a trend we are facing every year. Hot weather generally leads to grapes ripening faster and harvest coming earlier rather than later. It also means that crops are generally lower if they ripen too fast. This year however, we seem to project both a fair yield as well as concentrated flavors in our fruit. We are looking forward to what Mother Nature has to offer us in 2018!
For more information on the Spicy Vines 2018 harvest, follow us on Instagram and Facebook! We will be posting our latest harvest updates regularly, so stay tuned!
Until your next glass, peace and love….
Crystalyn, Doug & Team Spicy