Flaherty Wines

The last couple of weekends were busy with pressing out fermented lots. Our main cellar worker, don Armando, was unable to work, so pressing became a family affair. Sean was very enthusiastic about helping, while Ben mostly provided entertainment as he skateboarded around the press pad. Our friend Craig generously offered to help out as [...]

We received about three tons of Cabernet Sauvignon late Saturday afternoon. To make room for it, we spent the morning beforehand pressing out some of the first Syrah lots, which filled ten barrels. We were then able to crush the Cab early Sunday morning. The fruit was cold when we crushed it, and it hasn’t [...]

It’s happened again: summer has segued into fall. The days are still warm, but they’ve lost the intensity of summer’s dry heat. The nights are quite cool, the light is changing as the sun moves north, and the morning fog has settled in.  The kids started back to school this week. The country has returned [...]

We recently finished the first barrel rack for the 2010 vintage, and we have quite the collage of different wines in barrel this year. We received fruit exclusively from the Aconcagua Valley, with four distinctive lots each of Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon from the Manzur Encón vineyard next to the Putaendo River, Syrah from the [...]

We brought in the last of the Cabernet on Saturday. What a relief! (Sorry, Ed, but this harvest has been hard, thanks to my shoulder problem.) It was about three-quarters of a ton, whereas we were expecting a full ton. Our grower says that Cabernet yields are down everywhere, so we wound up with less [...]

Saturday was Labor Day in Chile (May 1st), which limited the amount of work we could accomplish. In particular, we were only able to bring in one and a half tons of Cabernet Sauvignon from Gonzalo’s Encon vineyard. We’ll be getting another ton next Saturday to finish out our harvest. The fruit looks very good, [...]

Our Cabernet came in on Saturday as scheduled, and it looks really, really good. The fruit arrived very cool, and the weather has cooled off a lot this week, so we were able to do a long, cold maceration before fermentation. This will result in a full extraction of the fruit. It was interesting crushing [...]