This has been a very busy week for Flaherty Wines. We received nine tons of fruit on Friday evening—4.5 tons each of syrah and petite sirah—which was scheduled for crushing on Saturday morning. That’s easily twice as much fruit as we’ve handled in a day in past vintages, so we were a tad nervous despite being reasonably well prepared. We had the necessary bins and cooling units, but still… That’s a lot of fruit!
Ed had a crew of three guys working with him to move and crush the fruit, and our son Sean helped out by washing the picking boxes. Both varieties were quite cold after sitting outside for the night. That proved key for helping to slow down the fermentations and keep temperatures from spiking. The petite sirah was a few degrees colder, so we cooled it down even further to give it a few days of pre-fermentation maceration. The syrah lots were inoculated immediately, but even so, they took a few days to get started. Once the musts got to around 20C, they fermented really fast, so we only had about 24 hours of scrambling to control the heat. Five of the six syrahs have peaked and should go dry within the next couple of days. The petite sirahs are just starting to take off, so we’ll be watching those carefully today and tomorrow. They should be finishing just as the next round starts to take off. It’s so nice when it works out that way.
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