Readying for Harvest is the focus of August. And our vineyards are showing all the signs of a Great Harvest. And by Great I mean both abundant quantity and excellent quality are coming together. Our vineyards look better this year throughout the summer so far than ever before. Dennis is doing a first class job of managing the drip irrigation and parceling out our limited supply of water. The number of Hot August nights could make or break us nevertheless. Don't pray for rain however because unless you can get the rain to fall on the Cabernet but not on the Zin, a good rain at the wrong time could ruin a great Zin.

We'll be bottling like crazy all those wines in waiting. Now with final blending trials complete, whites are cold stable and coming off of bentonite clay for heat stability, it's time to play another round of winery chess. Winery chess is played by plotting each and every move from barrel to tank through filters tank to tank and bottling dates so that never in the flow of wine is there check or worse - checkmate. Check is where the coordination of each step of pumping the wine either to rack, blend or filter doesn't end up in the right tank at the right time and an extra pumping(s) has to occur. Winery checkmate occurs when through no fault of the wine only the winemaster there is no empty tank to make the next move. This is a terrible costly loss of a game which is remedied by either buying or borrowing a tank. Of course there is one sure way of never losing in Winery Chess (and a perfect gameplan for those who have more money than brains), buy way more tanks than you need or may ever use.

So although I do expect harvest to start a little later than normal, I want to be all set to catch our Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon in perfect ripeness which may just sneak up on us with some Hot August Nights.