Regent Harvest and Crush

2010 Regent Harvest at Raven's Call Vineyard - 23 pounds of grapes.

Although we've had very cool weather, so not much ripening of the Regent grapes here at Raven's Call Vineyard, it has also been rainy, and more predicted, with continuing cool temperatures. There do not seem to be any berries splitting yet, even though Brix by refractometer shows 12-15% sugar. Close inspection of the vineyard shows some clusters have fallen off, a few berries are shriveling or rotting (not many, though), and the birds are getting a few where they found some accessible under the netting. So time harvest, I decided.

Regent crop on best 3rd-year plants

 A nice Regent cluster.

 My field assitant harvesting.

 Total crop - 23 lbs off of about 20 plants vigorous enough to fruit.

 Mysterious "floating-grapes" photo.

 Cleaning clusters and crushing.

 De-stemmed.

 Primary fermenter - just under 2 gallons must.

The Brix, by refractometer, on the free-run juice only tests at 14%, so I chapalitized up to 23. I also warmed the must up to about 80 degrees F to get the fermentation off to a better start (since low 80s are recommended for reds, and my batch is too small to generate enough warmth on it's own to keep the temperature up there). Sure smells good once the fermentation kicked in!