Harvest Update:

It’s Over!!   It was fast and crazy, and the most intense harvest we have ever experienced in our 20-plus years of crushing grapes.   In a normal year we run three crews of pickers per day, this harvest we were running nine crews.   Many wineries we talked to could not pick fast enough, did not have the tank space available to crush fruit and could not get enough trucks to haul their grapes to the wineries.   Since 60% of the grapes we crushed were from our own vineyard, giving us full control, we were able to bring grapes in at the optimum maturity to make great wines.   We learned that many wineries could not take grapes for two weeks at a time because of the hectic harvest schedule, and by the time the wineries were ready, the grapes were too ripe and often left to rot on the vine.   Our new facility and our great crew enabled us to do the impossible.   Expect very rich, concentrated, high alcohol reds and some great whites.   The chemistry of the juice from our vineyards on the west side of Paso Robles was similar if not better than any Russian River numbers we have seen.

Olive Oil and Joanne’s Cook Book Update:

Our first vintage of Rabbit Ridge Olive Oil will be available in six weeks.   We expect to produce approximately 50 cases of 375 ml bottles.   Half of our production will be bottled as new oil and the other half will settle out for three months as regular oil.   We hope to release our Olive Oil in conjunction with the release of Joanne’s cookbook “A Cooks Tour of Rabbit Ridge” in November.