No, we haven’t gone bonkers. While most of you are thinking that this year is about two-thirds gone, we in the wine business know that the new year is just beginning! For us, September starts a brand-new cycle, as we harvest and crush the new vintage of grapes.
The summer is over; we’ve finished bottling the wines from last fall, some of which we are now releasing to our thirsty customers. The busy summer tourist season is also winding down; in fact, it’s not too soon to start thinking about the upcoming Holiday Season: Thanksgiving, Harvest Festivals, Christmas. It’s going to take a lot of good wine to survive another round of celebrating!
The 2009 harvest began right on schedule here at Claiborne & Churchill. On September 1st we crushed our first grapes, some 11 tons of Pinot Noir, and the next day another 6 tons of Pinot Gris. Winemaker Coby Parker-Garcia had already recruited two excellent young crush workers for the season, Chris Leonard and Miguel Lepe, who had spent weeks cleaning and preparing the equipment for the season.
Someone once said that winemaking is “ten percent grapes and ninety percent cleanliness.” Well, that’s a little extreme, but there’s a grain of truth to it. At the end of a hard day, it often seems that clean-up takes as long as the winemaking that preceded it!
These days I do not
play as great a role in the day-to-day winemaking as I did during the first
24 years of Claiborne & Churchill. Nevertheless, September 1st
found me on the crush pad, as excited as a rookie! Once you’ve experienced the
honest, hard work of crush and the heady scents of fresh grapes and fermenting
wine, you’re hooked for life.
If you’re in the area, drop by and take a look for yourself.
Clay Thompson
