The day after

If you grew up in the 80’s, you remember the 1983 movie ‘The Day After’ about the first post-nuclear apocalypse day. This is not that. No, today is the day after the last cluster of grapes was picked for the 2013 crush at Addison Farms Vineyard.

Final numbers are still coming in [read: we misplaced the weight sheet from yesterday] but at a minimum, we processed 33,006 pounds of fruit this year. OK, so most wineries talk about fruit in tonnage, but I just pulled the number straight from Excel, and it sounded big. For those of you keeping score, that is 16.5 tons. Some wineries process that much fruit in a couple of hours, but for us, this was a big one. Our first crush in 2010 was 4.9 tons; our total crush 2010-2012 was 17.5 tons. And we did nearly that much this year!

It has been a really exciting year. The weather has been less than cooperative, but when it really and truly counted, it turned nice, warm and dry. Our total rainfall this year is 19.5″ above normal, but September is running a 0.75″ deficit to ‘normal.’ Sugar in the fruit this year has been on the short side, but the acids are beautiful. TA and pH are exactly what I wanted to see, even if Brix is going to be a little shy of ideal. Our wines for 2013 will have a crispness about them. They will not be big, powerful wines, but instead, low alcohol wines with some complexity. My early tastings of the juice and MLB-yet-to-start-wines suggests some great fruit flavors. We are making our first rosé this year from a couple of tons of Sangiovese.

Today is also the day after our last big event of the summer. This summer, we had the Asheville Wine and Food Festival, the Leicester Studio Tour, the 2013 ASAP Farm Tour, and finally, the first Cycle to Farm Sandy Mush ride. What wonderful events! We have felt the energy in our community, seen some great community-building activities, and had good traffic in the tasting room. A big thank you to everyone that has helped make this an excellent first summer for Addison Farms Vineyard.

I would especially like to thank Doug and Tony for all of their hard work, keeping us caught up in the vineyard all year long. We could not have done it without them. Laura and Christy have been available whenever we asked them to help out in the tasting room and the big events, and they are much more entertaining for our guests in the tasting room than I could ever hope to be. Linda, Sharon, Alicia, Christy, Kristin, Dianne, Maleada, Laura, Eddie, Dan, Tommy, Mark, Tony, Doug, Eddie [yep, two of them!], Kevin, Earl and Jerry have all been there to help when we needed them most. This is the type of farming and family support that makes a family farm even possible. Thank you all for everything that you have done to help us this year.