Any winery or winemaker who has a blog always takes the opportunity to show off what is one of the most exciting times in the yearly cycle of grape growing. I’m going to copy everyone else and do the same with this week’s post.
It’s called Veraison and it signifies the color change in the grape berries. More importantly, it represents the change from berry growth to berry ripening. At this point in the growing season berries begin to soften and change color from green to either red or yellow depending on the grape variety.
At the St.Jorge vineyard this past Saturday, August 16th, I walked the vineyard as I do often when I looked down row 48 and realized that the Pinot Noir had just started to turn color. It happened fairly quickly since I had been there just 3 days before and there was no veraison to be seen.
I had been waiting for this to happen for a few days now and the erratic weather we experienced the first two weeks of August had started to make me a bit concerned. I have been reading about Varaison from everyone else in the world and it seemed as if the Veraison Gods had forgotten about us. On July 28, Morgan at Bedrock Wine Co. declared Veraison at some of the vineyards he sources fruit from. Kristy Charles followed the next day. Jason at Tablas Creek on July 30. The Benchland Blog on August 6. Even if you don’t have the time to read through their blog posts, I highly recommend you click on through just for their pictures which are much prettier than mine.
I see this as a wake-up call to what’s coming in just a few weeks… harvest. It tells us winemakers that it’s time to start ordering fresh laboratory supplies, yeasts and additives if necessary, clean the dust off the destemmer-crusher and the press. In just about two months the “madness” that is harvest and crush will begin once again.
Update: I forgot to mention that on August 15, Jeff from Twisted Oak winery in California's Calaveras County posted a message on his blog... the first fruit of this year's harvest was arriving at the winery. Is that amazing or what?
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