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Note from our Sommelier |
Harvest 2011
The best thing that can be said about the 2011 Virginia harvest is that it's over. Other words to describe the vintage might include dismal, dark, dank and wet. There will be few- if any- great wines produced. Although some producers, if they were judicious in picking their harvest window and agile in the use of enhancement enzymes, made good wine.
The morose weather set in just as the first whites were ready to be picked and then lingered right into the red wine window causing sour rot, powdery mildew and stunted growth. The many dark, cloudy days did nothing for the grape sugar levels, which seemed to stick a few points below the level that most people were hoping for.
There were any number of inventive ruses used to attempt to lift the level of ripeness. Most vintners chapitalized (added sugar) to lift potential alcohol. Some spent days running empty sprayers through the vineyards, blasting the grapes with torrents of air hoping to dry them off. Others rented tobacco barns where grapes were spread out to dry and lose their water content. We will have to wait and see how well these various ventures prove to succeed.
Here at Keswick, we harvested our Courtside Vineyard on a Friday morning just after a brief but intense rain storm. We fortified ourselves with Mimosas (this is Keswick, after all) and then went about drying each grape cluster with pool towels before lugging out near ton of Petit Manseng fruit down to Keswick Vineyards where we would process our treasure. Careful monitoring of the other vineyards we buy fruit from paid off as well. Our Viognier came in just before a rain storm. The Petit Verdot from Mt Juliet was very good, but only after dropping half the crop in the vineyard and then carefully sorting through the rest.
Overall, I think the Keswick Team was one of the few fortunate winemaking endeavors that achieved a fairly solid success in 2011. We will know for certain shortly, when the proof is in the bottle!
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Here at Keswick our team has decided to try and source some of these grapes to air dry them on racks in hope of making a dessert style wine using the Italian ‘passito’ method. More later on this effort!
Richard Hewitt, Keswick Hall Sommelier
View our sample Wine List > |
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