The end of harvest 2018 is right around the corner—these bins are filled with some of the last grapes we’ll ship this year. We’re mostly down to the Riesling now, and a few other picks here and there. We’re close enough to being done that it doesn’t feel like tempting fate to say: this has been a very successive harvest. The weather has been perfect: warm and dry, with plenty of time for the grapes to ripen as much as necessary—it seems very likely that the 2018 vintage will be of very high quality indeed. The lack of inclement weather also meant that we had a far more sedate harvest season this year than in previous; instead of dodging rain showers and waiting for water to come off the canopy after rain, we could harvest consistently, and we didn’t have to hurriedly harvest ahead of a rainy forecast.

The end of harvest is always a strange time: we work for nearly a whole year to produce the highest quality wine grapes we can, and all that effort culminates in a hectic month or two of even greater effort. Once that effort is finished we can relax and take pride in what we’ve accomplished, but at the same time it can also leave one feeling a little empty. Busy hands are happy hands, and by that measure our hands have been quite happy the past few months. Of course, the work is never really finished: once the last of the leaves have come off we’ll begin pruning, and then we’ll begin tying down, and before we know it harvest 2019 will begin. But for now, we can savor the last of this strangely enjoyable labor, and then rest.