One of the most important decisions you’ll have as a winemaker is when to harvest. Some winemakers might be experienced enough that they could taste the berries and tell you when you do this, but for those of us who are new to this (and, I suspect, anyone who is science-minded), we have sampling and testing. For a small vineyard like ours, we only tested about 100 berries at a time from random vines around each block (Merlot, Cab Sauv, Cab Franc). I picked them, put them in a ziplock bag, and crushed them.

Once these were crushed, I ran them up to our good friend and neighbor’s house (Dr. Rich Schmidt, moosemountainvineyards.com) to test them.

With a pH of 3.86, 0.7 TA, and a Brix level of 23.6, we decided that it was a good day to harvest the Merlot! It was very exciting, but the yield was quite low.

Here are some pictures of the very first harvest (and crush):