Amador County Winemakers Seeing Earlier, More Flavorful Crop This Year

AMADOR COUNTY (CBS13) - It's winemaking time in California. We caught up with grape pickers and vintners in Amador County at the height of this early harvest.

It's raining grapes at Shenendoah Vineyards. Winery workers are putting in long hours for the harvest, which came early this year.

"The drought has something to do with it, but the vines look amazingly good for as little water as we had," said Paul Sobon, general manager of Shenandoah Vineyards.

Mother Nature left fewer and smaller grapes for growers, but it's not the worst news for wine drinkers.

"It's turning out that it's down probably 20-25%, which generally means fewer grapes per vine, sweeter, more concentrated flavors…just great intensity," said Sobon.

It all starts with pickers hustling through the Andis Winery Vineyard.

The grapes are brought to wineries and dumped into a hopper. Joe Shebl, Renwood Winery's general manager, explains the farm-to-glass process.

"This fruit just came off the vine about an hour ago," said Shebl.

The grapes are dropped into a de-stemmer and crusher. But some wineries like Renwood don't crush.

"And we'll ferment the whole berries. And so this, by doing this, we're making a very elegant, soft and juicy and fresh wine," said Shebl.

The grapes -- crushed or whole -- are then pumped into a fermentation tank.

"This tank has about four tons. So this has actually been fermenting for about seven days," said Shebl.

Finally, juice is pressed from the skins and the wine goes into barrels to finish fermenting.

If you make it out there in the next few weeks, the Amador Vintners Association says you'll see a lot of action.

"Many of our wineries, you can come up and, you know, just ask in the tasting room, 'can we go take a look at what's going on?'" said Jennifer Pechette, executive director of Amador Vintners Association.

What's left over from the winemaking process -- the stems and grape skins -- are either composted or given to cattle farmers for food.

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