Harvest 2016

It’s that time a year again folks! Crunch time for wineries—a time when our crew shines and do what they do best: produce high quality wine that we look forward to enjoying. This year Mother Nature is taking it a little easier on them with beautiful sunshine throughout the harvest, and cooler nights that help keep acidity and sugar levels right where we want them.

We were very excited this last week to officially begin our 2016 harvest by picking our Seyval Blanc. A few days later, we pulled the first of our Chardonnay - some of which will go into our first ever sparkling wine program!

RC is gearing up for a harvest that will consist of roughly 220 – 230 tons of grapes harvested and processes in about 6 weeks. That fruit will yield around 36,000 gal of juice/wine. While our red fruit is processed (pick, destemmed and crushed) relatively quickly at nearly five tons of grapes per hour, white grapes require a much slower speed of about 3 tons per hour. Ultimately red wine is much more difficult to make then white and sparkling wine even more so! 

We are very excited to see where this harvest takes us - so please don't hesitate to visit and ask about updates and info regarding the 2016 wines. 

Some things to remember for this harvest season:

• Grapes are toxic to dogs
• The best traps for fruit flies are based on sight rather than scent
• Refrain from picking clusters of grapes, as we need all the fruit we possibly can in order to make more wine for you!

You can get a complete run-down on harvest and the 2016 vintage at our soup events

Happy Harvest!

2016 Harvest Crew