Harvest finally began here at JARVIS on October 6th, which is the latest ever for us even though we are usually 2 to 3 weeks behind the rest of the valley. Our three vineyards here at JARVIS are divided into 16 picking zones so that we are able to pick each zone at its optimum ripeness. By October 19th we had picked 6 of those 16 zones.
We began the year with a good fruit set at bloom time, but with a cooler than usual summer we had to take some extreme measures. In an effort to make sure that our grapes would ripen we dropped over 10% of the fruit and then tried something totally new and different by stretching reflective Mylar down the rows to get more sun on the vines.

Of course we used our bird netting on all the vines to help keep those finches and blackbirds at bay. Unfortunately the bird netting has no effect on the 22 wild turkeys who have decided to call JARVIS their home this season. Our extra effort seems to be paying off as Dimitri is quite happy with the grapes that we have harvested thus far.