First of the Harvest and Crush

is there a prettier sight? here is the seyval a week before harvest.

Connie's Post:
Football, freelance and domestic chores kept momma and the boys at home the august 19-20th weekend, so lyrel stepped in and helped bring in the seyval harvest. the seyval is the earliest grape we harvest in the proofing vineyard. gerald measured 35 pounds of the grapes from the one row and thinks he may have dropped too much fruit when he went through the row to thin excess clusters. as a result, it didn't take long to harvest, but they were able to break in the harvest knives i gave to gerald for christmas. LUCKY! even better was the lack of rain to mess with the variety's development. shortly after harvest, we received 2.5 inches of rain over two weeks, so not too bad. the other varieties will wait until september to harvest and gerald is happy about that. he worries about the nights being too warm for the ripening. i still worry about rain. please stay away, tropical storms. we'd like to continue to have good harvests.

they brought the harvest back to the farmhouse and cousin charles was named godlet of stomp. here you see lyrel and charles having a great time with the crush. gerald says the 35 pounds of seyval equaled 2.2 gallons of precious juice to be turned into wine. no. odds are you aren't going to find this nectar of the gods at your local wine purveyor. currently, it is in the fermentation stages. this year, we are handling the crush and fermentation at the farmhouse. continuing with the great shoestring vineyard tradition, we have neighbors stopping by to give the wine in making a stir and check the specific gravity. lyrel has loaned us the craft room (move over, kiln!) and set gerald up with an air conditioning unit to regulate the temperature better.

here is to the start of a better year!