It was another hectic weekend. We pressed out the second bin of Syrah and the first Tempranillo. Our neighbors came around to help, which means it was a pizza day for Jen. Basil pesto, roasted red pepper, caramelized onions, and plain old cheese and salami for the kids. We made a paella after the work was done. And at some point, we received 1300 kilos of Cabernet Sauvignon, which we’re fermenting in two bins (one regular small bin and one super small microbin).

Early this morning we pressed out one of the bins of Syrah to make room for the next round. The other bin of Syrah and the Tempranillo will macerate for another week. Later we received another 800 kilos of Manzur Syrah and picked and crushed the rest of the Tempranillo (about 600 kilos). What a day.

On Saturday we received 1550 kilos of Syrah from Gonzalo Manzur, our grower here in the Aconcagua valley. The fruit looks great—clean and ripe. We crushed the grapes into two small fermentation bins. The fruit macerated for 24 hours, and then we inoculated on Sunday.
We also harvested the first of our Tempranillo this weekend, on Sunday. We’re picking in two stages this year, because the fruit is ripening somewhat unevenly. This first stage yielded about 700 kilos.

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San Felipe is a very dry region. We only get about 200 ml of rain a year, which is mostly concentrated in three or four storms between late June and early September. So every year we head to the south of Chile between Christmas and New Year’s for a little green therapy. This year we went all the way down to Puerto Varas, where we combined sightseeing (penguins!) with delivering 25 cases of wine to two new customers: Vicki Johnson’s Fine Foods and Gifts and the new Cliffs Preserve out in Parga. With this order, the 2004 vintage is sold out and the 2005 is officially released.

Chile celebrates its independence day on September 18th and 19th—dieciocho de septiembre. The holiday fell midweek this year, which made for a nice long weekend, so we headed north for a little camping and some vineyard scouting. We took the interior route north from San Felipe to Illapel. The road goes through a series of beautiful old train tunnels and winds its way through a striking section of Chile’s Little North. We spent the weekend at the Chincillas National Reserve, which is one of the last places in Chile that has a natural chinchilla population.

Flahertys in Reserva las Chinchillas

We continued on to the Agua y Tierra vineyard south of Ovalle. The organic vineyard is the project of gringo Jim Pryor. We’re talking about making wine with the owner Jim—800 kilos each of Syrah, Cabernet, and Carmenère, which we would eventually release as a separate blend. It will be interesting to see how the fruit compares to our Aconcagua blend.

We had a big surprise this morning, when we awoke to find a light snow had fallen in the night. This is a very rare event for us. We generally have a lovely view of snow-covered mountains, but it doesn’t normally snow down here. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t stick for more than a few hours, but it was fun while it lasted.

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We’re still recovering from a massive press party, in which 20 or 30 of our friends and neighbors helped press out two bins of Syrah. Things got off to a slow start (as they do) and went on late into the night. We’ll need to improve the lighting out on the press pad if late-night pressing becomes the norm. Our neighbors’ kids proved the most enthusiastic pressers, while the adults mostly supervised over beer and pizza. Speaking of pizza, Jen made a record sixteen pizzas, followed by a late dinner of ribs braised in barbecue sauce, with cilantro slaw on the side. Now that’s the way to press.

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On 31 March, we harvested the first fruit from our tempranillo vineyard. The vineyard was planted in the summer of 2004, so the vines weren’t carrying a heavy crop. We hired a local gardener and his wife to pick it out, and we picked a couple of rows with our kids. It took about six hours (it’s only a tenth of a hectare), and yielded 1100 kilos of fruit. That should give us about two barrels of wine (225 liters each).

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