2012 Harvest
2012 Harvest for bigLITTLE Wines is in the books. Late summer drought stressed some of our younger Riesling vines to the point where we were forced to pick slightly early. We picked for our bottle fermented bubbly in mid-September, Treehouse and Crayfish in late September, Mixtape and Tire Swing in early October. Some of the wine is done fermenting and blended already. Most of our wines are fermenting as we speak. Overall, quality was very good. The fruit was clean due to the dry weather late in the summer. Yields were down over 2011, but we are pleased with the chemistry and quality of the fruit from 2012.
We hand harvest fruit into 30 pound lugs in the vineyard. We then pick up the lugs and load them onto a flatbed truck to take to the winery.
Pete is arranging the lugs onto the flatbed. We can carry around 4-5 tons of grapes on the truck.
writing a new book on Michigan wines called Michigan’s Holy Water: The Great Lakes Wine Bible. would love to include you guys.