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Now that Fall has dropped in, the timing was perfect for me to stop being a winemaker for the night and put on the apron to cook a comfort food meal among friends. Warm, hearty, rich foods with copious amounts of Mastro Scheidt red wines, pair perfectly with the Fall season; and yes, I slipped in a barrel sample of Rose, because I can (Rose pairs nicely with the sliders...)
It's all about the grapes. Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Sirah, Syrah, Merlot, Barbera, Cabernet Franc, Zinfandel, Sangiovese, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Muscat Blanc was harvested by Mastro Scheidt in 2016.
No two seasons are the same and no two varietals are the same. My wines change with the seasons. Winemaking is not an exact science, it's subject to undiversifiable risk, known as Mother Nature. I'm showing the beautiful pics, the highlight reel. There's a lot, behind the scenes, the day in, day out unromantic reality of what I do with these grapes. There are a lot of steps to get raw grapes from the field to the bottle.
Enjoy the beauty of harvest.
One of the earliest vineyards we picked was Sangiovese
My family hand picked a vineyard of Syrah and Zinfandel
A view of the Russian River Valley vineyard from behind the bin
One of the most well maintained vineyards in the Valley
Hand picked and Hand sorted
Great looking Merlot from Dry Creek Valley
You gotta get in the vineyard and take your samples
Rose of Sangiovese
Hillside Cabernet came in to the crushpad at 6am
Dry farmed Cabernet Sauvignon in Dry Creek Valley. It's not easy, but the results are excellent
I may scare a few of you with this post.
Making wine and making sausage have something in common. They are both dirty. This post is about the realities of winemaking in pictures. If you want to continue to believe that being a winemaker is glamorous, a dream job, where all grapes are picked "at peak ripeness to achieve a perfect wine on the perfect day", this post will likely be a shock to you.
For disclosure purposes, all the pictures are mine, but all the processing in the pictures is not. I make wine at a facility with a wide variety of winemakers and styles. Each wine maker has responsibility for their own wine. This blog is a daily journal of my experiences in wine making..
Making wine isn't easy work. It comes with power outages, broken equipment, people who don't show up, late nights, early mornings, wine stained hands, a filthy car, tired feet, and plenty of uncertainty; a.k.a it's a job.
Not all the grapes make it and this is just one of the times they get washed down the drain.
Use this to spray on all manner of equipment or as a mouth wash
Grape must will stain everything it comes in contact with.
More wasted grapes, but it's ok. There are a lot of seeds in this must.
It's amazing that things get to me at all when my name is spelled wrong
Don't panic, it's just water.
Some wineries like to press their grapes really hard, this is the result. Moon rocks.
When this hit the floor it sounding like pea gravel. Dried up press grapes after a winery presses really hard for extra juice.
Grapes are found everywhere. Your car, home, lab, and on any flat space. Cleaning is essential.
While performing a punch down of the fermenting cap, it's highly likely that you will splash some juice. Your clothes will stain.
The farther away this waste is from the crush pad, the better. It's fruit fly bait.
This pile of stems shoots out the back of the destemmer (hence the name)
And now for the video. Sediment and lees are a fact of wine making. Period. They reside in all wines. What the end user sees in the bottle is the result of a long process to get a cloudy, sediment filled substance to market without flaws and wonderfully clear in the glass . To reiterate, this is not my wine. merely an example of cleaning after a barrel fermentation.
The 2016 Harvest marks the first time the entire family came out to pick some grapes and see the process, from start to finish. Three generations of family were on site to see what the harvest is all about.
I took some of my Sangiovese crop and bled off some juice just after it was picked. For those that like to read French words, Saignée or bleed in French is the technique and the word used to describe the process. The secondary benefit of this saignee process is the main body of the red Sangiovese concentrates flavors in the finished wine.
The Rose' has been fermented in neutral Sangiovese oak barrels, stirred in barrel using another French word, Bâtonnage, racked off clean and placed back in barrel to settle until bottling.
I've had visitors taste the unfined and unfiltered Rose' during the entire process. The nose is of strawberry and pink grapefruit but still has a little time to develop in barrel before the final product is released.
HARVEST 2016
After a brief period of cool weather in late August, the Sonoma County wine grape harvest has started for Mastro Scheidt Family Cellars.
The white grapes, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscadelle, and Semillon are 100% in, while the Sangiovese, Zinfandel, Syrah, Pinot, Merlot and dry-farmed Cabernet are all coming in within the next 7 - 10 days. Conditions are very good and the weather is stable, all good news. The vineyard and Mother Nature did their work well.
If you are a follower or would like to follow on Instagram or Facebook, I'm posting behind-the-scenes videos and pictures of the harvest. Everything from broken down trucks to tasting press wine, it's not always glamorous, but it is real.
SAVE THE DATES
Save the Dates for November 4 and 5 if you are one of my Fresno / Central Valley customers. Those are the dates for our Harvest and New Release Party. I will send you an invitation as we get closer to the dates. The Bulldog football game is away that weekend.
David Scheidt
Proprietor / Winemaker
