September 8
The extreme heat tapered off this week but the weather continued hot and dry until the welcomed fog came in on Thursday. Sugars did not rise as rapidly as last week and by Friday we saw a leveling off.
In the Pinot Noir program, it was a very busy week as we shifted from pumpovers to punchdowns on many tanks. We are doing four punchdowns a day during the active part of fermentation, so our crew is quite busy. We pressed two tanks and the wines are very impressive. It is a very exciting vintage for Twomey Pinot Noir.
We carefully selected three blocks of Merlot to harvest at our Soda Canyon Ranch vineyard and brought in 40 tons of fruit over the course of the week. The cluster and berry sorting is working well and the early reports on the young wine is very favorable. Next week should bring a surge of harvesting as the bulk of the ranch has achieved aromatic maturity.
~Daniel Baron