Syrah, sorted.

Vinoland's Syrah is picked, yay!  Harvest was quick and painless and the fruit looks beautiful.  The harvest party (Harvest Chili with jalapeno cornbread, then brownies and Neopolitan ice cream for dessert) was a lot of fun and included a great selection of wines.  All of which were consumed down to the very last drop.
One particular wine, that our merry little harvest group imbibed, was a Syrah made by a co-worker of mine (at TWWIAGE) from grapes from the 2014 harvest in Vinoland.  I was gifted a bottle of  the Syrah last Christmas.  My co-worker and her boyfriend had bottled this wine when it was less than a year old.  The main consideration for the early bottling was that they didn't have enough room at their house to live, for an extended period of time, with a barrel of maturing wine.  And the brief barrel-aging was clearly apparent.
Like a wine that has spent very little time in oak, this young Syrah had proportionally very little going on in the bouquet, or in the taste, department.  Unlike the novel, bubblegum-fun-factor appeal of an adolescent Gamay, i.e., a Beaujolais nouveau, the only interesting thing about this wine was the rather attractive wax seal that embellished the bottle.  (The E and V are the couple's initials, but I suppose they could also stand for enologist and vintner.)
The Syrah wasn't a bad wine, it was just nondescript.  Of course, the entire bottle was consumed.

Grappa anyone?

The 2014 harvest and the 2014 harvest-party season are well and truly over.  And last night I celebrated harvest's end with my co-workers at TWWIAGE.  I work with some great people and it's always nice to spend quality party-time with them.  For many of the production staff it was the first Saturday that they hadn't had to work since mid-September, so they really let their hair down.  And I mean they really let their hair down: the theme of the party was Woodstock so lots of bad, long, shaggy wigs abounded. 

Today, Vinomaker and I pressed off three different batches of Cabernet sauvignon.  It was a rather painless process this year, but still by the end of the day I was coloured purple from head to toe.  Quite psychedelic. 

Seeing all the skins reminds me that Vinomaker's friend, Sky King, usually pesters us to make a grappa from the pomace.  Too much trouble I say and it couldn't really be legally called grappa if produced in the USA.  What would I call it?  No matter, it's not going to happen.  Besides, I'm not a grappa drinker anyway.  The only grappa that I have ever thought half decent was one I purchased in a small caffé in Rome, just over the Ponte Sant'Angelo, which was made from Pinot Nero.  I digress.  Harvest is done.