Flaherty Wines

Saturday we moved most of the 2008 vintage to Viña San Esteban, where it will be stored in barrel until blending and bottling in about six months. The 2008 vintage was our largest to date, and we are planning to make about the same amount this year. We just don’t have the space for that many barrels in our cellar. San Esteban does our bottling for us, so they were the logical choice when we started looking for a barrel cellar.

To move the wine, we hired a truck and loaded up empty barrels on barrel racks. We then filled the barrels on the truck, using nitrogen pressure (no pumps) to rack the wine out of the cellar and onto the truck. The full barrels were offloaded with a forklift at San Esteban. Our friends Craig and Eduardo came up from Santiago to help out.

Our other preparations for harvest include buying a new press. Ed has had the old press since before I knew him. He and Pat Henderson (now head winemaker at Kenwood Vineyard) used to make wine in their garage on Boyes Blvd in Sonoma. Pat shipped us the press when we started making Flaherty in 2004. Because it’s so small, it took several press loads to press out a bin , which made for a very long day. The new press will speed up the process and allow us to press more thoroughly. A disadvantage, however, is that the thing is really heavy, so we won’t be able to move it around the fermentation pad as needed. We therefore picked up a reconditioned pallet jack, which will allow us to move the bins to the press rather than vice versus. The kids had a great time using it to rearrange the bins. Finally, our new barrels arrived the same day we moved the wine to San Esteban. Craig Thornbury of Tonelería Magreñan delivered two american oak and two romanian oak barrels. All these additions should help smooth out the winemaking process.