Last day of harvest again!

Also, today I finally figured out what the deal is with the shopping carts at the grocery store! I had previously figured out that the carts aren't kept inside the store, but upon finally figuring out that they're kept out in the parking lot, I thought they were a rental-type deal, because you have to put a coin in them to detach them from the rest. Turns out the system is just to keep them from getting stolen, because when you take it back to where it belongs, you get your coin back. Pretty smart system now that I understand how it works. Keeps them from getting stolen, and makes sure people put them back where they belong.

Today we received the Cabernet, which was the last thing still on the vines, so as of tonight we are fully harvested.

This morning we also tasted tank blends with Alain, this time of white and rosé. We tasted through the various possible blends of the finished tank wines to decide on blends for the Tradition Blanc and Tradition Rosé.

Despite being done with harvest, there is still a lot of work to do this week, with all of the Syrah cuves still needing to be pulled off their must. It was an intricate ballet of pumps in the winery, taking juice out of one fermenter and into another, and assembling the white and pink blends we'd decided on during the morning tasting.

I spent about a half hour managing a yeast overflow situation when the yeast that was to go into the Cabernet was prepared too early. When you're getting yeast ready to go into the cuve, you mix it first with hot water, then a little later with some of the juice from the cuve it's going into. You let that all sit in a bucket for a while, then dump it into the cuve. Here's a picture of just one bucket of yeast for a smaller cuve. The problem is, once the yeast gets active, it starts to foam up like crazy, and often overflows the bucket it's in. In this case we were doing yeast for one large cuve of red, plus the rosé of Cabernet that was pulled off of the larger cuve, so we had 4 buckets of yeast going, and we ended up needing to wait to pitch it because not all the grapes were in yet, so all the buckets started to foam over. The foam will go down if you stir it a bit, but in this case there was so much I ended up having to dump it all into a bigger bucket, and still had to fight with it to keep it from spilling all over.

I didn't have an Champagne at my house, but I opened a bottle of Chateau Guiot Les Jumeaux Chardonnay with the guys in honor of the end of harvest. After that I went to the grocery store, which is when I finally figured out the shopping carts. I also learned an important lesson about reading labels. I was in the beer and soda aisle, and on the beer shelf I found something that looked like a store-brand beer called Panaché. So of course I had to buy it, because just the idea of Albertson's brand beer made me chuckle. Also, it was very cheap. However, I opened one after dinner and realized I hadn't gotten what I was expecting. After reading the label, I realized that I had bought something vaguely akin to a non-alcohol hard lemonade. A sparkling lemonade with less than 1% alcohol. Is it gay if I mix it with rosé and drink it anyway?