Harvest 2017
All year every year we wait for the same day to arrive. No, not Christmas Day, Hanukkah or Kwanza — HARVEST! Admittedly they all have a lot in common, but our grapes are the gift that keeps on giving, you just have to have a little (actually a lot) of patience. But on the day of harvest itself, excitement is in the air and it’s contagious. The tractors are going, the crews are picking, the bins are filling, and grape after grape is begging to be chosen.
Transgression: yes, there are those grapes that are left behind. They don’t make the cut (literally) because some imperfection deems them unworthy of becoming our wine. Indeed, even those that make the cut may not make it through the manual sorting process and then the optical sorting process at the winery. We only use the best grapes and the rest are left knowing they could have been a contender!
Harvest is the culmination of all your hard work throughout the growing season and the promise of new wine to come. For us, being on a relatively young vineyard, it is particularly exciting because as our vines are maturing, each vintage of wine has been better than the one before. That bar is getting pretty high though! Nonetheless our winemaker is confident that our 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon will be the best one yet. Having tasted the 2014 and the 2014 Reserve, the 2015 and the 2015 Reserve (not yet released, still bottle-aging), and the 2016 (still in barrels), I’m skeptical!
Anyway, here on this perfect Fall day, where the air was perfumed with the scent of wine, we harvested 14 tons of grapes. You may be dreaming of sugar plum fairies, but me, I’m dreaming of our wine to come. That wine’s a long way off, so tonight we’ll make a toast to FENCES 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon with the FENCES 2014 Reserve. Cheers!
