As September turns to October we are in the full swing of things with this year’s harvest. Excellent growing conditions, and ideal summer temperatures have delivered us wonderful quality fruit and now it is up to us to start the winemaking process. Once the fruit is picked the first step is to “Crush” the fruit, which should more aptly be called destemming. This is where the grape clusters go through our crusher destemmer and the individual grapes and the grape juice are collected and pumped to tank or a bin, and the stems are separated out. The next step in the process consists of lots of pump overs and punch downs which is the act of mixing your fermenting must and having free run wine come in contact with the skins of the grapes that are fermenting. This happens twice or three times a day until the wine is fully fermented. When the wine has finished fermenting it is time to press the wine. This is the process of loading our press full of the skins that have been fermented and pressing all the wine out of the skins until you have nothing but dry grape skins that will eventually be spread in the vineyard for erosion control and soil nutrients. The last part is the rinse and repeat, meaning that in all honesty most of the time at harvest is spent cleaning equipment after each use so it’s ready for the next wines to come through. Each step in the process is equally important and gives insight as to how the wine will eventually turn out.