Rain this week, catch up time ...

Assistant AVV Winemaker Harry Wetzel grew up on the property, so has seen his fair share of harvests over the years, as well as AVV's 24/7 activity that surrounds each crush.  He now leads the second of our three shifts during harvest. 

Harry writes:  "Yields are down, particularly for Zin, which is not necessarily a bad thing...better quality.  We managed to get all of our most vulnerable fruit in before the rains came today.  Finished with Pinot, Cab Franc, Malbec and Chard and nearly done with Zin.  Got some of the Gewurz in last week.  Made for a very long night as the first load arrived around 1:30 am, and the second at 5:15 am. 

With the current rain we have nothing scheduled to pick this week (so far).  This allows us to play some catch-up and create more room so we can do a big push once things dry out.  My shift is busy starting the fermentations and filling barrels (and emptying tanks), as well as inoculating wine lots with ML bacteria to get the malolactic fermentations going.  Chard barrel ferments are moving along, and we are having to keep the cellar open 24 hours with fans running to push all of the CO2 out of the building. 

If the cellar is closed, even for a few hours, the CO2 levels from the fermentations rise to dangerous levels.  We run into this issue every year, but this year is seems especially bad...we just have a lot of stuff fermenting at the same time.  The dangerous side of winemaking...."