Well, the 2008 harvest is upon us. We began crushing on labor day - no rest for the weary. The first grapes to arrive were the Vyborny Zinfandel, followed 3 days later by the Halling Zin. The grapes look great as you can see below.

The grapes are placed on the scale.	Phyllis weighs the grapes.
Jim moves the grapes into the winery.
The grapes are crushed in our stemmer-crusher. That's Brenda and Chris from Mutt Lynch helping out and Susan Halling looking on in the last picture.
After dumping the bins, they are cleaned. Susan Halling gets her hands dirty!
Juice is placed in barrels for the Rose.	As you can see, it is full of life.
Of course, not everything goes smoothly. We had to stop and replace a sheered bolt on the stemmer-crusher.	And then we discovered the tank gasket did not seal - after the tank was halfway filled.

The stemmer-crusher got fixed. The tank got sealed and the harvest continues...

We are now midway through pressing (pictures below) all our Zinfandel. The Pinot Noir will come in shortly and then we can take a breather.

Pressing begins by draining the tank.	The remaining pumice is raked into bins.	Bins are moved by forklift to the press
The bins are dumped into a hopper above the press.
After the pressing, the pumice is loaded in bins which are trucked back to the vineyards- Nutrients for next years grapes
And, yes, Phyllis really does get her hands dirty.

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