Month: October 2013

Harvest Wrap ’13 – why this may be our best vintage yet!
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Christopher Strieter
Co-founder
It seems like the 2012 harvest just wrapped up yesterday, but here we are at the tail end of the 2013 vintage already. It’s been an interesting year and we are excited to watch the wines develop as they age in barrel over the next 10 months; though 2013 hasn’t been without its challenges. 
We had some weird rains mid-season and some early ones in the middle of harvest that increased the botrytis pressure, especially amongst coastal Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Some heat waves also meant harvest arrived early with high sugars and high acids. This translates into more sorting and work in the cellar to keep the quality up, but our cellar crew did a rockstar job making sure we got the best of the fruit crushed and fermented and into barrel. Overall we expect great and interesting things from 2013, as it was a far from normal year.

Our family owned vineyards performed amazingly this year, Hillcrest pumping out a record-breaking 6 tons of Pinot Noir and Thieriot coming close to a new record with just over 8 tons of Chardonnay. With high sugars and acids we expect bright fruit and strong structure which should make for some excellent wines that will age exceptionally well.

And finally we can’t praise our new winemaker, Thomas Brown, enough. He brought everything through natural fermentation and has a great looking oak regime set up to maximize the unique flavors of our vineyards. We’re very excited to be working with him as our wines will benefit from his many years of experience making some of the best wines Sonoma and Napa has to offer. Stay tuned to our brand new website for a 2012 release announcement, and thank you all for reading! We look forward to sharing a glass with you and toasting the end of harvest!

See our harvest photos and videos on facebook (sneak peek below)!

– Chris and the entire Senses Team