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 [...]

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 knew this was going to be a late harvest based on the progress of the grapes over the summer, but I was still surprised by how long we had to wait. It seemed like the whole country was crushing, while we were just sitting around. It’s a bit nerve-racking to be doing nothing while [...]

I’m on my own this week with the final fermentations, as Ed is at the London Wine Fair. The Fair is conveniently scheduled in May every year so that it is off season for the Northern Hemisphere wineries, but it is always a bit of a stretch for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere [...]

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 [...]