Flaherty Wines

Saturday was a long day, pressing out three Syrah lots and then picking and crushing the rest of the Tempranillo. We decided to postpone harvesting the last ton of Syrah until next week, so right now we only have one fermentation going (the Tempranillo). The remaining Syrah lots are all dry, and they just need [...]

We made it through last week with some warm fermentations, but no real problems in the end. We pressed out two of the bins on Saturday morning to make room for the second round. Syrah takes on good color and extraction right away, so the lots have remarkable depth despite the short maceration. (In fact, [...]

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 [...]

We were down in Cauquenes for New Year’s Eve, camping out in our remote little corner of the planet. We’ve made a lot of progress on the vineyard, with new water tanks and a piping system that enables us to water the new plants. We had an unusually wet spring, with rain every three to [...]

We were in Cauquenes over a long weekend recently, checking on the new vineyard planting. Over the winter, we cleared two and a half hectares and planted just under one and half. The original idea was to plant all the cleared area, but the nursery that was going to supply a large share of our [...]

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 [...]

We crushed our second lots of Syrah on Saturday—two more bins of 800 kilos each. This is the fruit from the side of the vines with afternoon sun exposure. (We harvested the morning side last weekend.) Again, the clusters were clean and ripe, with small berries. This is the last of our Aconcagua Syrah. We’ll [...]