Sep. 22
I moved to Kobe from Osaka in the early morning.
I visited to Kobe Winery.
We were going to harvest Cabernet Sauvignon at the estate vineyard of the winery.
It is a collaboration project of Hakutsuru Sake Brewery and Kobe Wine.
I am a consultant of the project.
We have done the harvest of Chardonnay on 25th August.
It was a very hard job.
Fortunately, we had many hands, who were the members of staff in Hakutsuru Brewery, today more than the Chardonnay harvest.
At first glance, there were many good grape clusters.
But in reality, there were a of damaged clusters because of the record level long rain in August.
It is the most terrible condition for the winery since its opening.
We unwillingly cut down a lot of damaged clusters.
Even though a good clusters, we had to clean up almost all of them.
It was very hard job.
However, because we had a lot of hands, we could finish the job before lunch.
Finally, we got 300 kg Cabernet Sauvignon.
The volume is less than half of our first expectation but we got truly fine grapes thank of our hard job.
After lunch, we crushed grapes and cleared its stems by hand.
You can work out it far easier using the machine.
But I am sure the result by hand is far excellence than machine.
We double checked the damaged clusters by hand.
Finally, we could get very, very fine grape ”must”.
They would be fermented without sulfur and macerated by no hand as far as possible.
Everybody has done a very good job!
I am really looking forward to taste the finished wine.
Then I took late night Shinkansen to Tokyo.
I had a nice dinner with Kobe wine on the train.
I think I did a good job!
