Harvest ‘21
A lot has happened here at Tira Nanza since our last update! Harvest 2021 is officially in the books! Harvest is always filled with excitement, hope, and some degree of controlled chaos. With this being our first vintage, every one of those emotions was amplified. Harvest means early mornings and long days covered in dirt and grape juice. Even still, this is always our favorite time of year as months’ worth of hard work and expectation culminates in the transformation of grape to wine. In the end, this vintage has been everything we could have hoped for and more. The vines responded incredibly well to our transition to organic farming, and we are extremely excited about the quality of the fruit and how the young wines are developing.
Our harvest started with Viognier on the 13th of September and ended with Cabernet Sauvignon early in the morning of October 2nd. This week we will press the last two tanks of Cab and all of our wine will be starting the aging process either in tank or barrel. The last lot going dry (finishing fermentation) is always a huge relief for any winery and grants us the chance to pause for a second and look back on harvest and the vintage as a whole.
This year was not without challenges from a farming standpoint as we only received about a third of our average rainfall leading to less growth and smaller yields in the vineyard. However, our change in farming and irrigation practices enabled us to make it through to harvest with beautiful, fresh-tasting fruit and next to no dehydrated berries. For us, the trade off between a smaller quantity of super high-quality fruit and bigger quantities of less exciting fruit is one that we would make every time, so we are thrilled to see how these wines come to represent this vintage.
From a winemaking perspective, we’re delighted to say that we were able to make each one of these wines without any additions or alterations to the chemistry. We were able to pick each varietal at the moment where the flavors and juice chemistry aligned in such a way that we had no need to add water or acid, common practices in many wineries that we feel dilute both the character of the wine and its ability to truly reflect the vintage and the place it was grown. Our goal is always to produce wines that are an authentic representation of what transpired in our vineyard that year. In that way, every wine is a piece our history and the truest representation of what our unique site has to offer. Adhering to that principle, we experimented with dry farming the rows that we picked to make our wines this year. It was definitely a risk in a drought year, and it may seem counter-intuitive but dry farmed vines can actually be better prepared for water stress due to their deeper root systems, and are less prone to dehydration late in the season. Additionally, all our wines fermented with only the native yeast that lives in our vineyard rather than through added commercial yeasts that can distort and add different flavors to the wine. These may all seem like small things, and they certainly make for a bit more work and careful planning, but it is our hope that these efforts enable us to make wines that bring you the same joy that we have working with them.
For us, harvest is always the purest reminder of not only why we do what we do but also of how much we love doing it. The days may be long but they are full of smiles and laughs set to an ever-changing soundtrack of birds, tractors, forklifts, and music. Farming is hard work and there are definitely some days that beat you up more than others, but when you get to see the literal fruits of your labor come to fulfillment the feelings of gratitude and satisfaction are nearly indescribable. The sweetest part of all was being able to share this experience with our closest family and friends. Simply put, these are the moments that keep us going on the hardest of days and longest nights while exhilarating us on the best days. The cyclical nature of our lives means that in almost no time we will be pruning the vines and starting to work towards the next harvest but right now we are taking a moment to be grateful for the past, content for the moment and as always, excited and hopeful for all that is to come.
Cheers,
-Greg & Sydney