First day of harvest 2018

Hello wine lovers. We start a new vintage. Like last year, it's very nice to be harvesting in cool weather. It's nice to have cool fruit when we pick up the freshly hand-harvest grapes in the morning, and crushing them outside is cool also.

This vintage, we are lined up to bring in two different Lodi old vine Zinfandels, Syrah, and Petite Sirah. Like last year, all of our grapes will be Certified Sustainable. Today was the first of the Zinfandels, this one grown by Todd Maley. This is the same Wegat VIneyard that was part of the Lodi Natives Zin collection from a few years ago. On Wednesday we'll be picking up Mohr-Fry Ranches old vine Zinfandel, and the Syrah isn't far off. Some other noteworthy Lodi wineries will be making Zinfandels from the same two vineyards, and it will be interesting to see what we all wind up with in the bottle.

Like last year, we are happy to show folks dropping by for wine tasting the fermenting grapes and explain what's currently going on. We will be crushing and pressing off and on over the next month and are happy to stop and say a few words about what's going on.

We'd like to give Paul a big thanks for helping us out today, you will see him in one of the pictures.

-Steve