Welcome to the official blogsite of PANTHOS!
Nick Sikeotis, co-owner of Pantheon Cellars does a final check of his notes as we kicked off Harvest 2007 with two bins of Grenache Noir this morning at 11:10am at Ron Silva's Silvaspoons Vineyard. The vineyard is 4.5 acres of Entav 362 clone on quad on 3309, planted 2001, running east to west. The soil hits hard pan at 32", but was ripped down to 7'.
Ron had a great crew of about 7 efficient pickers, 3 of them pictured to the left. (The jeaned-butt in the bin is mine, Jon Bjork, GM of Pantheon Cellars.)
Nick and I manually sorted through the loose, medium-sized clusters looking for any rot or redberry, but found almost none. So we spent most of our our time just pulling leaves to keep veg flavors our of our wine. Perfection is everything for our wine, of course!
After a final inspection and weigh-in, we took our 0.92 Tons back to Borra Vineyards in Lodi for crushing. It's always exciting to start a new crush, as you can see on my face as I pump out the newly-destemmed 20% whole berries into a T-Bin for a cold soak before fermentation kicks in.
Holding the 3" hose from the crusher looks easy, but all those crushed grapes can cause it to whip around a bit, making it hard to spread the grapes evenly in the bin. I have found, after a number of bins, that it doesn't really matter if I make it even. The weight of the grapes will distribute them evenly whether I like it or not.
Nick Sikeotis, co-owner of Pantheon Cellars does a final check of his notes as we kicked off Harvest 2007 with two bins of Grenache Noir this morning at 11:10am at Ron Silva's Silvaspoons Vineyard. The vineyard is 4.5 acres of Entav 362 clone on quad on 3309, planted 2001, running east to west. The soil hits hard pan at 32", but was ripped down to 7'.
Ron had a great crew of about 7 efficient pickers, 3 of them pictured to the left. (The jeaned-butt in the bin is mine, Jon Bjork, GM of Pantheon Cellars.)
Nick and I manually sorted through the loose, medium-sized clusters looking for any rot or redberry, but found almost none. So we spent most of our our time just pulling leaves to keep veg flavors our of our wine. Perfection is everything for our wine, of course!
After a final inspection and weigh-in, we took our 0.92 Tons back to Borra Vineyards in Lodi for crushing. It's always exciting to start a new crush, as you can see on my face as I pump out the newly-destemmed 20% whole berries into a T-Bin for a cold soak before fermentation kicks in.
Holding the 3" hose from the crusher looks easy, but all those crushed grapes can cause it to whip around a bit, making it hard to spread the grapes evenly in the bin. I have found, after a number of bins, that it doesn't really matter if I make it even. The weight of the grapes will distribute them evenly whether I like it or not.
Posts
