2024 Harvest Update: Swedish Hill Winery | Romulus, New York
For Swedish Hill, the 2024 harvest season started in late August
Josh Kessler, who joined the Swedish Hill Winery winemaking team in 2021 and is now head winemaker, sent this update on October 1, 2024:
This year has been an early harvest. We processed Diamond on August 28 and 29 this year making it my earliest start to a harvest!
We have processed most of our whites at this point, which consists of Diamond, Vignoles, Cayuga, Aromella, La Crescent, Frontenac Gris, Pinot Gris, Valvin Muscat, Melody, and Gewurztraminer! All the fruit has come in looking very clean and ripe. Very few adjustments have been necessary for the juice before fermentation which always makes me happy.
Riesling and Vidal Blanc are our two big white varieties still hanging on the vine.
Few reds have been processed so far. We picked Marquette early but sold all the fruit to other wineries and we processed some Zweigelt for ourselves. This is already done and dusted, sitting in tank pressed off going through malo as we speak.
We also picked Pinot Noir for our dry rose which is fermenting beautifully right now. The rest of our Pinot we have sold to other wineries. We have done a few hot press days already this past week and today for Concord and Corot Noir, respectively. All our Bordeaux reds are still hanging nicely. These past few weeks with the rain have been unnerving but we are keeping a close eye on things.
So far stand outs for me this year are Valvin Muscat, Gewurztraminer, and Zweigelt. They are tasting good this year to me [with] a lot more varietal character then I am used to seeing. I think they are going to make excellent wines.
For the Zweigelt I sectioned some off for no malo – unoaked style light body acid driven red that I foresee being served chilled with just a hint of RS. Super excited about this one!
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