The Charnu 2010 harvest is officially underway! We harvested our Lewelling block of Cabernet Sauvignon on Saturday. The accompanying photos show the processing at Caldwell Winery down in Napa where we lease facilities.
The first photo shows the great rig they came up with to feed the grapes from the picking bins into the de-stemmer. It saves a lot of shoveling!
The second photo shows the sorting process being done on a shaker-table. This year, the slots in the table are a bit larger. The result is that virtually all of the raisins fall through, so the grapes coming off the table are really clean.
The grapes looked and tasted great! Mature flavors and crunchy brown seeds, but reasonable sugar levels. I hope the rest of the blocks fare as well.
The last photo shows the grapes being loaded into the tank. We try to be as gentle with the grapes as possible. Rather than pumping them into the tank, we hoist them up in bins and drop them in from above.
Let's hope that the remaining picks go as smoothly and that the grapes look as good.