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Harvest 2008 was a mercurial season. After unprecedented spring frosts, we see-sawed to an intense heat wave in late August that prompted us to pick quickly and, for the first time, at night. Fortunately, these challenges were balanced by the beautiful fruit we brought in!
Harvest 2007 was picture perfect in our vineyards. An early heat spike ripened the fruit just when it was needed and a cool down allowed the grapes to be picked at a leisurely pace, giving us exceptional fruit. In the 17 years since the first vines were planted, we have never seen a harvest where the fruit in every single block of the vineyard looked so good!
Harvest was a success!
At long last, harvest started on Tuesday, September 19. The first fruit picked was the Stony Block, our highest-elevation parcel, planted to Pinot Noir from the Dijon 115 clone.
This year it seemed both the fruit and the yields were outstanding! And the fruit looked just beautiful, we ended up with a truly memorable harvest.
Here at Marimar Estate, at the western edge of the New World, there's seldom anything "average" or "normal" about harvest -- but 2005 was even more nerve-wracking than usual. In the end, though, we came out with flying colors!
This was a year of intense work during the growing season, arduous labor in a quick and unseasonably warm harvest and, in the end, our lowest yields ever. But the good news is we expect our organic viticulture and the low yields to pay off with high-quality wines.
This was a year of extremes and challenges at our Don Miguel Vineyard. It began with an unusually wet Spring and ended with our shortest harvest in history -- 13 days straight, including Sunday! Thunder and lightening in early September lent a dramatic touch as we revved up for the harvest, which started later than ever. It was a precursor to the problems that lay ahead.