My final harvest for 2007 took place this last Sunday. Smokey Ridge Ranch is a family owned 100 acre ranch located in the Apple Hill area, just outside Placerville, in the heart of Gold Country. Purchased back in the 1920’s by their grandfather, Kirk and Wendy now run the place. Originally the ranch was planted mostly with pears and was one of the largest pear orchards in the area. Fortunately for me, they recently planted what looked like about 8 acres of grapes. With neighbors like Boeger Winery on one side and Lava Cap Wines on the other, Smokey Ridge is indeed in good company. 

Planted at Smokey Ridge is one block of Sangiovese, a couple blocks of Zinfandel, and another block of Syrah. The Zinfandel vines are 8 years old and the others looked to be just as old. The vineyard is planted on a gentle slope with a south/southwest exposure. Even more important, though, the vineyard’s 2,500 foot elevation brings welcome overnight relief from the scorching summer days of the Sierra Foothills. Ideal grape growing conditions.

Before continuing with our Zin pick at Smokey Ridge, I just have to share another part of our day.

A Quick Apple Diversion

As you would expect from an area called Apple Hill, there is an apple orchard around every twist and turn of the road. Some, like Smokey Ridge, just sell apples but several go all out and offer apple pies, apple cider, pumpkins, honey, and more.

Being high season for apples and pumpkins, these hills were swarming with tourists looking to score the perfect pumpkin and feast on delicious apple products. There’s just something about the old Gold Rush towns like Placerville that make you feel like you’re stepping back in time. We make it up to Apple Hill at least two times a year. Once before Halloween to pick up pumpkins and to bring back apple pies for Thanksgiving and then again after Thanksgiving to cut down a Christmas tree.

One of my family’s favorite places to stop is Abel’s Apple Acres. Besides the full offering of apples and apple products, they also have a nice picnic area, a craft fair, and a hay bale maze & horse back riding for the kids. Before we started picking grapes, though, we just had to have some of apple pie. A la mode, of course. The picture below says it all, don’t you think?

What about the Zinfandel?

With bellies full and smiles on our faces, our picking crew left Abel’s and drove the short distance to Smokey Ridge.

Outside the unassuming barn pictured below were a handful of parking spaces for visitors. Next to and behind the barn was a small pen of friendly animals that were more than happy to munch on any apples you’d toss their way.

Kirk led us down a short dirt path to the vineyard behind the barn. The Zinfandel was perfectly ripe. The readings from a week ago were 24.8° Brix, pH of 3.48, and TA of .70. My Brix reading after crush was 26.2°.

 

It took us about an hour to fill the 7 bins Kirk laid out for us. The haul was supposed to be 250 pounds but when I weighed grapes at home, we ended up with more than 300! No worries! With the grapes paid for and loaded into my truck, we needed to move quickly and get them crushed and cooled.

Before we left for the pick I had the Sorella Ridge crushpad, which doubles as my garage, all setup with the crusher/stemmer. Pictured below you can see the crusher/stemmer on the right side of the photo. I backed my truck up to the crusher and my cellar-rat-for-the-day, Robin, dumped the grapes into the hopper. Once the blue container catching the grapes was full, the grapes were poured into a fermenter. We repeated this process until all of the fruit was crushed.

When we finished crushing and cleaning all of the equipment, I hit the Zin with SO2 (to kill off any wild yeast and bacteria brought in from the vineyard) and dropped in frozen jugs of water to cool the grapes. The Zin will soak like this for 4-5 days before I inoculate with yeast and begin the transformation from grapes to wine.

I’m really looking forward to how this wine will turn out. The flavor is excellent and the clusters were very consistently ripe. Stay tuned.