2021 Harvest Recap From Our Winemaker

Given the epic heat wave we experienced in the summer of 2021, we were prepared for an extra-early start to harvest. As a surprise to everyone, though, the first of our fruit wasn’t harvested until September 10th; one of our later start dates in recent years. Gotta love that hurry-up and wait! We think this is due to the fact that the majority of our vines are very well-established, and therefore less inclined to be affected by extreme temperatures. We toasted to the new harvest and blessed our first bin of estate-grown Muscat Ottonel with a sprinkling of last year’s Muscat Frizzante. 

Despite the leisurely start, the remainder of the harvest season flew by in a blur, and we were finished nearly a whole month earlier than usual. A much more condensed (and intense!) harvest than we’re used to. Thanks to our incredibly hard-working cellar crew, their long hours of cleaning, sorting, pressing, stomping, more cleaning, punching-down, pumping-over, forklifting, racking, tasting, inoculating, evaluating, and—oh yeah!—even more cleaning, we’ve been able to produce some of the most delicious and exciting wines to date. Our vineyard team’s hard work throughout the season really paid off, as despite there being less fruit than usual, the quality across the board was exceptional. It makes our job in the cellar a lot easier when the fruit looks that good. It was (and always is) a labour of love, and we are so excited for our wine club family to be the first to try the newest releases from this exceptional vintage. 

Keira LeFranc, Winemaker