Harvest Fest Recap!
Wow, what a great Harvest Festival weekend! Even after all these years it never ceases to amaze me that our team manages to keep things fresh, fun and exciting. This year’s Harvest Festival was definitely one of the best that I can remember. We were fortunate enough to have amazing weather, a great turnout and wonderful food and music from Friday to Sunday.
It all kicked off on Friday evening with a concert by local favorites the Damon Castillo Band and let me tell you, these guys are true pros. The sound was great, the show was fun and personal and most importantly the crowd was having a blast! Damon’s band is really fantastic and seeing them play in such an intimate setting is pretty special. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll have them back next year!
On Saturday we kicked off the annual Harvest Festival open house and we were blessed with fantastic fall weather. Local band, Soul Sauce, provided the tunes and festivalgoers enjoyed barrel tastings, grape stomping, and so much more. One of my favorite things about harvest fest is the opportunity to educate the public about our vineyards and winemaking philosophy while sharing the process with them. On display we had bins full of different grape varietals and Niels was displaying how we test brix or sugar content. Seeing all of the different varietals side by side is really quite fascinating because you can start to observe noticeable differences in color, cluster size and flavor.
Barrel tastings are also a great way to give our customers a sneak peak into the winemaking process and a look into the direction a wine is heading. This year we were sampling four wines from our Whale Rock Vineyard: Chardonnay, Petite Sirah, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. All of the barrel samples were 2013 vintage except the Chardonnay, which was 2014. The Chardonnay was probably my favorite to sample because the wine is literally a month off the vine! Aside from being a little cloudy, the Chardonnay already tastes very good and people were coming back for seconds!
Sunday morning we started off the day with a lovely Yoga class amongst the vines followed by an organic brunch by local restaurant Centrally Grown. The all levels yoga class was taught by our in house Yogi Lauren Harvey and took place on our lawn at the back of the tasting room. The weather was perfect and the class was the ideal way to start out the day. Following the brunch we eased our way into another day of music, wine and food and it couldn’t have been better!
Cheers,
Luke
