While Dave and Dan were off on their excellent adventure, picking up the Walla Walla Valley AVA Syrah grapes for our Firebird wine, growers Mike and Julie Slater of Tonnelier Vineyard in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA and Diane Nemarnik of Nemarniki Vineyard in the Chehalem Mountains AVA were busily picking our blocks of Pinot Noir. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to snag any photos at Diane’s place, but Mike and Julie sent us these from their vineyard:
Mike Slater of Tonnelier Vineyard with part of our 2016 Pinot Noir harvest.
Look at that gorgeous 777 and 115 Pinot noir grapes.
With Dave, Dan and the Syrah safely back, it was time to gather a hoard of fantastic volunteers for an epic day of processing grapes. Among them, wine writer Tamara Belgard of SatiatePDX shared these great photos:
Sorting line close-up.
Now THAT is a cluster!
A true journalist, Tamara believes in confirming her primary sources.
We also got some great photos from Fanfare Club Founding Member Jen, who shared these:
The grapes come tumbling down out of the harvest bin.
Weigh-in upon delivery.
Dave, steam cleaning the sorting line.
Repeat volunteer, and Fanfare Club Founding Member Mark, shared this great photo:
Thank you #bellsup for allowing me to participate in this year’s harvest. I had a good time except for the spiders. Looking forward to tasting that great #syrah and #pinotnoir
Finally, after coordinating and cooking lunch, Sara showed up in time to snag a few pictures of her own.
Dave, Nick, Katie and Jen hard at work on one side of the sorting line…
…while Mark, Tamara, David and Doug sort on the other side.
Meanwhile, Erica busily moves harvest bins of picked grapes from the back of delivery trailers to the weigh station to the sorting line with the forklift.
And the cleaning never ends; Erica and Rick (the dry iceman cometh back this year!) work on cleaning harvest bins.
Finally, a little video of what the destemmed grapes look like, dropping into the fermenter.
Thank you so much to our amazing crew of volunteer sorters and photographers who helped us blast through roughly 5 tons of grapes in a record 4 hours. Unbelievable. We couldn’t have done it without Mark, Katie, Nick, Jen, Tamara, David, Doug, Erica, Rick, Mike and Julie.
