Campo Grape Harvest 2020

When the grapes are ready, friend and local winemaker Richard Westfall somehow charms a few of us unemployed seniors into showing up at his vineyard at the ungodly hour of 6:45 AM for the harvest. We do it for the experience, for fun, and to see the process, but basically we're slaving away picking grapes for eight hours.

This year we picked Grenache.  We pressed about 30 gallons of it to make rosé, but it all went through the stemmer/crusher, and the rest will ferment for a while with the skins on.

Don't I sound like I know what I'm talking about? Not bad for low-grade field labor.

Stemmer/crusher

Some people, (not me!) have referred to rosé as "garbage wine." But in this winery, garbage cans (clean and new of course) do get used in the process...

They made me use the press because my feet weren't clean enough...

Didn't go home empty-handed.  Two bottles of Westfall Winery's famous Blue-Label Wine!

They actually do have fancy labels, but the ones I got were "sneak previews."  I really shouldn't drink the Zin for at least a year, but I probably will ignore that rule...