Today, we are picking Pinot Noir for a Cuvee Catherine Brut and Cuvee Catherine Rose Brut depending once it gets to the wine, we make that determination. And the people who are helping us do it are the staff from Oliver Bonacini Restaurant group. So that’s Auberge du Pommier, Canoe, Biff’s, Jump, Oliver Bonacini Grills and so one. And these are people who could be kitchen workers, like chefs or sous-chefs, you have front of the house people, you have managers, the whole shooting match. They’ve come out, they’ve taken their Sunday off. This is a working for some or their family day or whatever. They’ve taken the day to come down to Niagara and actually work for free in the vineyards and lend some of their own self to the wine making.
After we pick here, we’re going to show them how the wine is finished in the winery. There is gorging, we’re going to taste some wines, some experimental wines we made almost six years ago as well and give them a sense of what the tear water is all about and matching that with a pack of food. And it’s great that these guys have come out because the restaurant business is about service, it’s about knowledge. These are knowledged workers in their field, but it’s hard to get them out because it’s a night culture in restaurants and they work hard and they are pretty preoccupied with other things. Next to work, they could come out here and bust themselves out.
With Oliver Bonacini, it takes wines seriously in those restaurants which is why there are such leaders in our industry that are so far ahead than so many other competitors. They take their food and their service and their wine knowledge at very high standards. So here, the students of food and wine in a sense working in our vineyards, they’re going to be able to talk knowledgeably about sparkling wine, whether it’s champagne or whatever. And that’s how you make the big money in restaurants if you know what you’re talking about. The tips are better. All the service that you give your customers is better. It makes a ton of sense. There is very forward thinking. So we’re glad to be working with people like Oliver. We wish they would clone themselves.
So this vine is vertically shoot positioned meaning that all the grapes are grown down here. And then, we’ve trained the vine to grow vertically through these wires. As you can see, the plant is all straight up and down. And every 1 ½ meter of foliage of canopy supports one cluster and two clusters of grapes, and we’re looking at about two tons per acre out here right now, and the dark red fruit. This is an unusual vintage that we’re having an incredible with the almost tropical rains. So that much rain comes down. A lot of it runs off, but what does penetrates the soil has to go somewhere and some of them is going to go with the plants. So this year, we did something different. We left because the plants were growing so vigorously. To hold back the plants, we left a lot of clusters like this. They’re called secondaries. They form later in the season. And we usually would take them off, but this year, we let them stay on the plant to just slow things down a bit and not push the ripeness of the other fruit too far. So that formed very early in the season. This formed very late in the season and never really come to sweetness. They can just see—I mean they are sour as anything. The same with these guys.
As you look at the seeds, the seeds are quite interesting. So there you have ripe skin, ripe grape, brown seeds, unriped grape, green seeds. That’s one of the things we’re looking at and this will take enamel off your teeth, it’s so sour, versus the purple one which is absolutely sweet and delicious.
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