Month: September 2017

Harvest 2017

                                                           

 

GRADY FAMILY VINEYARDS HARVEST 2017

It has certainly been an interesting year. First a very wet winter and spring brought hail to the vineyards. Summer was more normal with a couple of hot streaks but nothing out of the ordinary until August when we had a prolonged heat spike over 105 for several day in a row. We applied more water to help the crop through the heat wave and things seemed to be getting back to normal, then we had a light unseasonable rain! Fortunately the grapes seem to be a resilient crop and they tolerated it all well. We have harvested our whites and the Pinot Noir and Zinfandel. All looked like good crops and fruit with excellent chemistries. This morning we picked our Petite Sirah under a beautiful orange sunrise. For the next 3 days we will have machines picking more fruit that we sell to other wineries. When we have finished this week we will be down to just the Cabernet Sauvignon (my personal favorite wine) and thankfully they are a thick skinned variety that will tolerate just about anything nature can throw at them, so we will not lose anymore sleep over the strange weather. Thank God at least we did not have to deal with hurricanes! Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those devastated in Texas and Florida and Puerto Rico and the other islands that are recovering from the storms. We have moved on to new vintages for several of our wines and are really pleased with the wines. In particular our 2015 Pinot Noir has turned out very “French” in style with lighter color and big bold cherry aromas and flavors.

We have already contacted Cooking with Turf (the Irish band) for our St. Patrick’s Day party in 2018. Beth and I had the joy of a 2 week trip to Ireland in August this year and had a wonderful time. The country is VERY green and the people very inviting. We enjoyed both literary and musical pub crawls, and I have to admit I did drink more Guinness than wine while visiting the Emerald Isle. Our daughter Christy was with us for the 2nd week as the trip was planned to attend the wedding of one of her best Notre Dame friends. We all survived my driving on the wrong side of the road and getting through the round abouts.

Please enjoy all of the wine club shipments and feel free to email with any questions.

Jim and Beth Grady

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