There wasn’t a lot of fruit, but three years after planting, we felt we had enough of the Willamette Valley’s first Seyval Blanc planting to pull off the fruit and give it a go with a couple of experimental batches. So, on Sunday, September 19, 2017 we headed out with the clippers and the buckets and brought in our first official harvest on the Bells Up estate vineyard!
First of five rows of Seyval Blanc, and our first harvest ever from the estate vineyard.
Now THAT is a Seyval Blanc cluster! Lots of D’Anjou pear flavors going on.
Winemaker Dave snipping Seyval Blanc off the vine.
And that’s the sum total of our harvest. Roughly a quarter of a picking bin.
We brought our old, refurbished basket press from our amateur winemaking days out of its current location as tasting room decor and put it back into action for pressing the Seyval Blanc harvest.
Winemaker Dave on the press.
Immediately after this photo was taken, and three cranks into it, Dave remembered why we don’t use this press anymore.
All done! And here’s the cake after the pressing was complete. While it was a fun project to do once, we’re pretty sure the basket press is going back into retirement now.
One of two carboys of experimental fermentations with the first Bells Up estate Seyval Blanc!
The wine we make from this will not be available for sale; this is purely a chance to experiment with the juice and see what comes out of it. We do hope, however, to have enough output in the 2018 vintage to produce a Seyval Blanc for sale. As always, it depends on what Mother Nature has in mind.
