The wine grape harvest is in full swing at the Texas Heritage Vineyard estate vineyard in Gillespie County, Texas. The vineyard was first planted in 2015 and grows Alicante Bouschet, Malbec, Tempranillo, Souzao, Tannat and Viognier grapes. The Texas Heritage Vineyard team started picking grapes a little bit earlier this year as the temperatures climbed into the triple digits in June. With this excessive heat, things are moving pretty quickly. The team hand-harvested their Viognier beginning at 6:30 on Sunday, July 16. The fruit is absolutely beautiful, and the quality is great. It was a record harvest of Viognier grapes with volunteers picking more grapes than ever before. The Viognier grapes have now been pressed and are in tank waiting to start fermentation.
Texas Heritage Vineyard followed that by harvesting their younger Malbec grapes by hand this past weekend to make rosé wine. Their red grape vines are maturing well and look healthy with excellent grape clusters. Texas Heritage Vineyard owner Susan Johnson believes their yields will be up a little from last year. The heat has caused faster maturation and sugar levels have risen quickly. To combat the heat and lack of rain, they’ve needed to irrigate extensively. The Texas Heritage Vineyard team will begin machine-harvesting the red grape acreage on Friday, July 28 starting with Tannat and the older Malbec vines. Over the next week or so, they will move on to harvest Tempranillo and Alicante Bouschet from the estate vineyard.
On another note, the vineyards at Wildseed Farm lost all of their fruit to hail, and Texas Heritage Vineyard will not have all those white grapes to process this vintage. As such, Texas Heritage Vineyard is buying more fruit from growers in the Texas High Plains to make up for this shortage. It looks like Texas Heritage Vineyard will harvest right around 100 tons of grapes from their estate vineyard and other excellent growers. At the current projections, the fruit will be about 50% Hill Country and 50% High Plains. Exciting times for sure!
Photos sourced and information reported by Big Thirst Marketing
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