Crush is on in full force in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Some wineries have already processed all of their fruit, but many are still in the midst of harvest. Coeur de Terre has half of their estate Pinot Noir processed and in fermentors. They are also processing grapes like Pinot Gris from other wineries.
I went up to the vineyard Sunday afternoon and stayed until about 10:30 that night. Scott had another three hours of work to go at that point. We have a few days off now because of the rains. We'll start in again in ernest on Thursday.
There is a huge difference between Pinot Noir processing and Pinot Gris. That's a bin of Gris in the photo above. With white wines like Gris (yes, believe it or not, those grapes will make a white wine!) With the whites we are processing you want to get them removed from the skins as quickly as possible, so the grape are processed, destemmed and put into the wine press. The press takes about two hours to complete it's cycle, so there is some free time in between batches.
I spent most of the day up on a ladder under the destemming machine pushing the grapes around in the press to ensure that the grapes fill the entire machine. I'm always amazed at how well the machine does it's work. The stems come out completely cleaned of grapes and the grapes come out unbroken and without stems. Not sure how a huge piece of industrial machinery is able to do all that. I'm don't usually do physical labor, so my body is a bit sore today! I'm glad I have a few days to relax and recover. I'm sure Thursday and Friday are going to be long days (and nights!)
