Harvest Kicks Off with Chardonnay, a Sparkling Press, and a Desert Tortoise

Harvest got started at 3:30 am today/August 4 when winemaker Jef Stebben got his first call that grapes would be on the way---what would end up as 1.278 tons of Chardonnay from Chiricahua Ranch, a vineyard in the Willcox/Cochise County growing region. There are some great aromas of caramel and baked apples in the air right now; those might disappear as the grapes turn into juice and wine!

Fruit from our estate vineyard is ripening but isn’t ready yet; we estimate we’ll start bringing it in next week. Usually that would mean sauvignon blanc and other whites, but this year at least now—it looks like malbec and merlot and the other reds may be more mature than the whites.

First we’ll press these grapes and we’re going to use a sparkling wine press so we maximize the quality and the yield. As Jef explains, “we’ll end up with better quality juice and bigger quantity.”

After pressing we’ll keep the juice cold for about a week and keep any solids from the grapes in suspension with the wine. There’s a lot of flavor in those solids and this approach will improve the wine’s sense of place and build lots of aromas as well as flavors.

After a week we’ll rack the juice off the sediment and rack it to another tank and then a barrel. Fermentation will start in neutral oak and take about 2-3 weeks. We’ll stir the wine before racking it into tank and then back to barrels. It will age for one year. This wine will become the 2025 vintage of Scott’s Chardonnay. It’s our only wine not sourced from our estate vineyard. It will be released in the fall of 2026 or early 2027.

And yes, we do have a ‘critter’ update, in our tradition of wild desert creatures wandering on to the crush pad: today it was a desert tortoise. He visited for a while and then we returned him to his greener habitat off the crush pad.

Stay tuned for more harvest reporting!