To start, as always, an “amuse bouche”:

Here is Erik, shaving a black truffle over the second course, a celeriac soup served with my 2008 William Augustus Cabernet Franc.

We had started planning about two months ago, with a tasting of multiple vintages of Velocity, my new Cabernet franc, two vintages of viognier-marsanne, and even my long sold-out rosé, of which I had just one case left in my personal cellar.

Erik and Ben put together magnificent pairings throughout the meal, from the belgian endive radiccio salad with duck confit and truffle vinaigrette, to the celeriac soup and the wild boar risotto.

Dessert was an astounding truffle crème bruleé tart whose flavors lingered on the palate for nearly an hour after I had the good luck to drop in and have a nibble before the dinner started.

I have heard of the scent of truffles being intoxicating, but had never before experienced first-hand the near blissful state this modest little fungus could produce.

Erik gave me three truffles to take home – like gold! – and tonight I’ll try my hand at a risotto, though sadly without the wild boar. Or the culinary wizardry – but I will try to do them justice.

They had picked nearly four tons before the sun even came up. Randy drives his International with its patented “Torque Amplifier” (I need to ask him what that really is).

With the sun finally lighting up the vines, the crew made short work of block B.

The truck awaits its load.

And in what seems like no time, the pickers are done and on their way to the next job.

Randy loads eight-and-a-half tons of Viognier for transport to the winery.

And – surprise, surprise – everyone else is picking today, too! The longest wait for harvest now turns into the most condensed harvest in decades, as six weeks’ worth of grapes seems to land on crush pads around the valley in a matter of a few days.

Not to worry, we’ve waited this long and can surely wait a few more hours. The fruit is cold and safely stacked, and we will tackle it first thing tomorrow – before the sun is up.

This what October has felt like. When are we ever going to harvest? And now the sun has yet to rise on the first day of November, and I can honestly say that we are a solid month behind.

But the calendar is just a piece of paper with numbers on it, and now we can put to rest all those worries about whether it would ever come. Today we will finally bring in the harvest from Gold Vineyard…as soon as it is light enough to see the clusters:

and light enough to spot the occasional bit of rot, which has been rearing its ugly head as fruit has stayed and stayed and stayed on the vine.

Patience! Here it comes at last.

The good news is, this is only going to help the remaining clusters as we head into the ripening home stretch, and now I won’t have to pick so many of these out when harvest comes along.

This is one very, very late year!

Fred was good enough to do a careful filtering the day before…

…as the wine had been reluctant to finish malolactic (just like last year).

Fred sparges the empty bottles with a healthy dose of nitrogen to chase the oxygen out, then the GAI filler does the rest.

Meanwhile, I wait for the bottles to emerge so I can drop a fresh screwcap onto each one, trapping a little nitrogen in the bottle’s headspace (thanks, Linda, for this picture).

Then it’s off to the screwcapper and we’re home free!

See those two white things just before the wine enters the labeler?
It’s too tempting to mention that this wine already has some big fans.

In this case the 2010 Malbec has had a long, long secondary fermentation, not completing its conversion of its high levels of malic acid (due to the cool vintage) until mid-May. Towards the end of the process, it was clear the wine was getting tired of being cooped up in barrels with a bunch of ML bacteria, no matter how beneficial they were.

The wine needed to breathe! So out of the barrel it came – gently, at this stage. A few days later, though, we took the unsuspecting wine and aggressively splashed it out the racking valve into a Brute, then pumped it back over into the top of the tank, agitating and aerating for about 7-8 minutes. I tasted every minute or two and enjoyed the evolution from a tight, brooding, closed-in style to a wine expressive of blackcurrants and black tea, reviving the freshness and intensity I remember enjoying in the vineyard.