Think you want to work a harvest?  Want to find out what that really means?  Follow our intern, Sarah Green, as she chronicles her experience as a first time cellar rat.  This entry reflects on bottling and personal progress.

It’s getting to be about that time.

Driving past the endless miles of vines at night, an eerie white glow of floodlights rises above the rows: crews have started picking. The first fruit has started trickling into nearby wineries. A truck drove past  Donelan loaded up with bins and heading for the hills. With a glint in his eye Joe says, “it feels like Christmas is coming.”

As much as the beginning of the 2011 harvest is on our minds, we are also hard at work  concluding the work begun one and two years ago.

Last week we bottled three Donelan wines: the 2010 Nancie Chardonnay, the 2009 Cuvee Keltie, and the 2009 Richards Family Syrah. After a couple of days of preparation, a large truck pulled up to the winery one morning.

This mobile bottling operation serves small wineries like us who don’t have their own bottling lines. We rolled up our sleeves, welcomed a few temp workers onto the team, and Continue reading →