15th
Roussanne Crush!
With Philz fabulous Silken Splendor in hand, Crystal and Serena showed up in the early hours of the workday to meet baby #3 - Roussanne.
The grapes were beautiful! Big fat clusters of green and rust colored translucent grapes. The sweetness exploded in your mouth as the grape burst. Unbelievably tasty (as said by a hardcore red wine drinker). The pick was incredibly clean so we just had to pull out handful of leaves and some pincher bugs. The clusters were perfect in size with very few raisins. The acid bombs were sweet! Mother Nature was genius with this ton of grapes.
The grapes went through the destemmer but no need for the shaking table as we had done with the red grapes. In about 20 minutes we had a beautiful vat of greenish sludge that tasted so good! Jonathan (our winemaker for the Roussanne) tossed stems back into the sludge (so unlike our reds!) to give it some additional complexity.
Now, the grapes will be in the cold room soaking for the next several hours until this evening when we go to press!
So, if you are reading this before 5:30pm, you clearly don’t have a busy work day so feel free to come visit us for the press. The press itself will take almost 2 hours (totally different than our reds).
