It’s the most wonderful time of the year! I bet a handful of you who just read that, either sang it out loud or in your head. No, I’m not talking about Christmas (although that will also be here before too long), I’m talking about harvest season! Harvest is here once again and looks to be a good one! Here at Bluestone we have already started picking some of our grapes with more to come.
So far for estate fruit, from properties at both our tasting room location and the patch of vines you see on the way in, we have harvested Chardonnay and Golden Muscat. The total for Chardonnay was 18.5 tons and 2.8 of those tons will be for our sparkling Chardonnay (more on that in a future blog!). We did share three tons of the Chardonnay with Blenheim Vineyards, which is just south of Charlottesville. As for the Golden Muscat we brought in a total of 14.9 tons! That’s a lot of future Moscato!
 Chardonnay waiting to be processed.  Golden Muscat waiting to be taken down to the crush pad. |  Golden Muscat looking delicious!  Lee Hartman, winemaker, weighs each bin to keep an accurate count. |
Currently not all of our wine is estate grown so we work with other local vineyards to bring in other grapes like Petit Manseng and Viognier. Recently we brought in a total of four tons of Petit Manseng from both Lovingston Winery (located in Nelson County) and Silver Creek (near Wintergreen). Each vineyard we got roughly two tons from. We also get Viognier from Silver Creek, which will probably be at the vineyard by the time this is published.
I asked our winemaker, Lee, what he thought would be coming in next and he said that more than likely Merlot will be ready early next week. Both from Silver Creek and our estate, including the first harvest from a neighbor’s vineyard that Bluestone has managed since planting in 2015. As of now, Lee also said everything is coming in beautifully and the fruit is showing good sugar and acidity. He also mentioned that last week with the Chardonnay and Golden Muscat that was brought in was the biggest one day harvest we’ve had and it took 3 days to process the fruit, which comes out to about a third of the production for Bluestone.
I asked our winemaker, Lee, what he thought would be coming in next and he said that more than likely Merlot will be ready early next week. Both from Silver Creek and our estate, including the first harvest from a neighbor’s vineyard that Bluestone has managed since planting in 2015. As of now, Lee also said everything is coming in beautifully and the fruit is showing good sugar and acidity. He also mentioned that last week with the Chardonnay and Golden Muscat that was brought in was the biggest one day harvest we’ve had and it took 3 days to process the fruit, which comes out to about a third of the production for Bluestone.
 Crushed and destemmed golden muscat grapes.  Owner, Curt Hartman, working to crush and destemm the grapes. |  Grape juice after it has been through the press.  Lee dumping chardonnay grapes into press. |
There is still a lot of fruit to harvest but the Vidal Blanc coming up to the tasting room and the Cabernet Franc and Chambourcin about half a mile before you get to Bluestone is still on the vines, but not for long! Don’t forget to keep checking our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to see all of the things happening at the vineyard, including harvest days!
 Vidal Blanc |  Chambourcin |
Thanks for tuning into this week's edition of Out of the Barrel! Cheers!
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