Wines I'm Making: Harvest 2022

2022 was a difficult year for winemaking for us for a number of reasons. The main problem was that harvest coincided this year with the Sonoma County Art Trails open studio event I participate in, and there was a Santa Rosa Symphony concert on the weekend of harvest (also the second weekend of Art Trails, October 1 & 2; I do the backstage photography for the Symphony). There was a severe, week-long heat wave (with temperatures reaching 118º in Santa Rosa at the peak in September). We even had hail early in the year, although that caused little harm.

The result of all this was that there was a lot of damaged fruit this year (the Sangiovese, in particular, suffers from the heat and drought) and I was pressed for time during the initial stages of the winemaking. We got so little Sangiovese that for the first time in many years we will make no rosé this year. There were many split berries and these were being visited by swarms of honeybees and yellow jackets. 

I threw the Sangiovese in with the Cabernet to make a field blend. Unable to get to The Beverage People (our local wine supply store) at the right time, I gave up trying to buy the yeast I wanted and started the Cabernet/Sangiovese fermentation with a vial leftover from last year, Prise de Mousse. Prise de Mousse is a strain optimized for white wine and rosé fermentations, but I imagine it will work to make a red wine well enough. We ended up with about 15 gallons of crushed grapes and juice. The grapes were harvested on September 30 at about 24.5º Brix. We got about 119lbs of Cabernet. I didn't weigh the Sangiovese, but it was probably another 20lbs or 30 lbs. 

 

I'm not sure what the result will be. The proof will be in the wine. I look forward to trying the finished wine, probably about a year from now. On a bit of a tangent, I got stung by a dead bee while de-stemming the grapes, not by a live bee but by a dead bee that had become mixed up in the crushed grapes. So, now, if anyone ever asks me "Was you ever bit by a dead bee?" I can say "yes."