Well it’s been a busy couple of months at Utopia between harvest and bottling. Due to the record heat this year we harvested our Pinot Noir on September 21st, earlier than any previous year. The timing of the early harvest also coincided with our bottling of the 2008 Utopia Estate Pinot-Noir…

If that wasn’t enough, this last week we also harvested 1 ton of secondary crop for a Pinot-Noir Rose that we will release in Spring 2010. (Secondary crop refers to the fruit high on the vines and out of the primary “fruit zone”. This fruit ripens much later, (usually in November) than the primary crop and will make a beautiful Rose for our tasting room just in time for Spring release).

In addition we have also been prepping the remaining undeveloped section of our vineyard for the final phase of development. This week we ripped the soil and conditions permitting we will disk and lay out the new rows this week and next. When completed our total acreage under vine will be just under 17 acres. At that point we will have no fewer than 14 different Pinot-Noir clones and a large block of Estate 76 Chardonnay for our Estate wines. Sweet!!!

Have a good one!

-Daniel Warnshuis
Utopia Vineyard & Wines

(693 cases produced)