Fall

With the 2021 harvest in full swing as we write this, and with lots of questions about how it’s going this year given the challenging summer experienced by so many across BC, we thought we’d give a little update on how things are looking here in the Similkameen Valley, and at Clos du Soleil.

Clos du Soleil Harvest 2021: Mid-Harvest Update

• Our team expects to harvest around 120 tons of grapes this year – our largest ever.
• We are finding extremely high quality in the grapes from the Similkameen Valley this year. We were incredibly fortunate to have experienced very little impact from any wildfires this summer, and the intense, dry heat has led to intense, full-flavoured grapes that will make excellent wine.
• We are in the final stages of harvesting grapes for our white wines. The only remaining harvests for white wine as of writing (September 22nd) are Chardonnay from La Côte vineyard, and Pinot Gris from Whispered Secret vineyard.
• We are just at the very beginning of our red harvest; this will stretch through October, and into early November, so we have some busy months ahead of us.
• Despite the warm summer, our grapes have maintained really bright acidity, which is what gives Clos du Soleil wines their lively energy, and makes them such wonderful food wines.
• Because we are harvesting most days, if you happen to be visiting our Tasting Room we invite you to pop around behind the winery to our crushpad, where we are always happy to explain what is going on, and to see the action for yourself!
• We will provide an update as soon as harvest is done for the year, so watch this space for final harvest numbers, teasers of what’s to come, and musings from our winemaker.

Another harvest season is done! And, in spite of an autumn that was colder than normal for our region, we are happy to report that in 2019 we had an excellent growing season, and are extremely happy with the quality of wines produced. Read on for a little bit of insight into what we’ve been up to since our tasting room closed. Suffice to say: no rest for the wicked… or the winemakers.

Clos du Soleil Harvest 2019

• In 2019 we crushed 99 tons of grapes at Clos du Soleil.
• Our harvest started on September 4th, and our last harvest of grapes for the season was on November 4th – a full two months of picking. (Not every day, but close!)
• As of the time of writing, we are still quite busy in the cellar, pressing our red wines, barreling wines, and monitoring the very end of fermentations. An exciting time, but we are all looking forward to things slowing down in the coming weeks!

A final word from Clos du Soleil Winemaker Michael Clark to get you excited about the wines to come from this year’s harvest: “Our white wines from 2019 are concentrated, intense, with brilliant flavours and bright acidity. Our red wines are full of ripe flavours, full but fine tannins, wonderful moderate alcohol levels, and have the structure that will provide excellent aging potential. We are very excited by all of these wines!”

While we appreciate the sentiment behind author Elizabeth Lawrence’s statement that “Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn”, in reality this time of year leaves us little time for daydreaming, romance and poetic notions! That’s not to say we don’t marvel and wonder in the beauty of Fall – far from it – it’s just that for us that takes the form of harvest and hard work. The best kind of hard work, mind you, the kind that yields its own poetry and wonder… for what is a beautiful, expressive wine if not poetry in a bottle?

Before that poetry can make its way into the bottle though, we need to get the grapes harvested, the crushing done, and all kinds of other labours of love completed! So why not take time to sit and watch the grapes turn as we reveal exactly what it takes to get the harvest in… Without further ado, we present to you:

Clos du Soleil Harvest 2018 by the numbers

 

Tons of grapes harvested so far: 67T

Tons of grapes still to pick before harvesting is done: 23T

Number of varieties of grapes we are working with: 8

Number of Clos du Soleil vineyards we farm: 3

Number of contracted growers who grow for Clos du Soleil: 5

Number of people working in Clos du Soleil winery during harvest: 5

Combined years of experience of our cellar team: 51

Number of bottles of wine from one of our barrels: 300

Number of barrels in Clos du Soleil winery: 110

Number of concrete tanks in Clos du Soleil Winery: 3

Number of barrel fermentations this year: 14

Number of hours per day we are working: 25

Minutes of the day when we aren’t playing music in the winery: 0

Number of cups of coffee consumed per day, per team member: 94

Number of hours Mike (Clos du Soleil winemaker) has spent driving the forklift: 74 million