Schweiger Vineyards News

“Sometimes the lights all shining on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip its been.”
-“Truckin’” The Grateful Dead

And I hear tell the road to hell is paved with good intentions
And mama my intentions were the best
-“Good Intentions”  Randy Travis

So, here we are near the end of another harvest.  With the introduction of the Winemakers’ Notebook to our website, I had great intentions to blog at least weekly (or perhaps my original typo of “weakly” is more appropriate) throughout the harvest.  However, harvest came on quickly…not catching us off guard, but darn near close.  Blogging has fallen to the wayside, but I’m back up on the horse, so giddiup, here we go…Dad and I have just been working at a breakneck pace to keep things rolling along.  Fortunately, we had a cool spell a few weeks ago that gave us some breathing room, giving us time to get the first wines picked down to barrel to make room for the next wave, most of which is now inside the winery.

Why are the yields so low?  I’m sure you’ll be hearing many different reasons from producers over the coming months…and many of them will be very different.  This spring saw very unique conditions ranging from severe frosts, heat spikes, and high winds from week to week.  So…depending on when your flowering was…maybe the frost got you…maybe the heat got you…and if Mr. Heat Miser or Mr. Cold Miser didn’t get you, then the wind was happy to blow through too!  Our summer was actually fairly mild with no severely long heat spikes.  The harvest did start a bit early, simply because of the smaller crop load on the vine.

The good news, the quality so far has been outstanding.  The downside is that this will be one of our lowest yields to date.  As I write this, we still have about seven tons of Cabernet Sauvignon to bring in and about one ton each of Malbec and Cabernet Franc.  Speaking of which, it’s time for punch downs…so back to work with me! -Andrew Schweiger