2023 grapes are Harvested!

Vintage 2022

Japanese/日本語

Zinfandel

We had bigger yield in 2022 than before and our workload increased. We are trying to have a higher sugar content level but due the heat wave forecasted in early September we decided to harvest in the first week of September. We experienced 110 degrees for four straight days in the second week of September. The fermentation was challenging due to higher temperature. On top of this we have had a drought for three years in a row.

Thinning the grapes

My strategy was to have one cluster per shoot but this year I thinned the cluster by cutting the berries off at an early stage and allowed to have two clusters per shoot when there is enough space between clusters.

Fourth year vine trees

This is my first time harvesting the grapes from the trees of 4 years old. In order for Zinfandel to have a stable harvest you really need to wait for the 10 years old tree.

Sugar level

We are shooting for 24 brix for the sugar level but it varies. The average brix was 23.5. We still have room to improve.

Pressing

The sugar level varies from tree to tree and is even different from cluster to cluster in a tree. This year we harvested in two phases due to the sugar level differences. The first phase was on August 20 and the second one was on September 2.

Secondary fermentation

When pressing the berries is completed only the juice is in the glass container. Three gallons of carboy, one gallon of carboy, magnum size and regular size of bobbles are filled with grape juice. Actually I can already call it wine with more than 10% alcohol. It will start the secondary fermentation with airlock on top of the bottles. It will convert the malic acid into lactic acid with the process of called malolactic fermentation. It will take about two months to complete but the temperature control is critical for this process.

New corker

The old corker was suddenly broken in the middle of bottling of 2021 Barbera wine. I really didn't want to leave the new wine bottles without the cork. I temporarily put rubber stoppers on the top of the bottles. I bought a new floor stand corker and it completed the job in a few minutes. I really needed this at the end of year for bottling 30 or so bottles of 2022 Zinfandel.

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