Harvest timing is the final critical decision of the growing season. Pick too early and the fruit lacks development—green tannins, unripe flavors, insufficient concentration. Pick too late and you risk overripeness, loss of acidity, and the ever-present threat of weather.
The window is narrow. Sometimes only days. And the pressure to pick before that window—to secure the crop, to avoid risk—is enormous. We resist that pressure.
Our approach is to taste constantly in the weeks leading up to harvest. We're not just measuring sugar, though we track that too. We're tasting for flavor development, for the softening of tannins, for the moment when the fruit shifts from merely ripe to truly expressive.
That moment is different every year. It depends on the weather of the vintage, the vigor of the block, the varietal, and factors we can't fully quantify. It requires judgment, developed over seasons of paying attention.
When the moment arrives, we pick quickly. All by hand, directly into small bins, with immediate selection in the vineyard. The work is intense but brief. And then we wait again—this time for the fruit to reveal what it has become.