Whew, crush is all over. All the reds are in their respective barrels and tanks; all the fermentation is complete. They will now 'rest' until next summer at the earliest. I had to add a new tank to the cellar - a 3000 liter floating-lid fiberglass tank - for the red. We picked the vineyard in pieces as they came ripe, and the bigger tanks were too big to hold the individual pieces.

The rose has been filtered, and is now just lying in wait of bottling next month. I will bottle it at the same time I bottle the 2009 CDR 'Reserve'....still working on a proprietary name for it, as "Reserve" or "Vielles Vignes" both seem too commonplace.

Fall has come to the vineyard, and with it all the beautiful colors you would expect. The leaves will start to fall within the next couple of weeks, and in the mean time, I am out working on pulling up the dead vines to make room for the replanting in the Spring. With the emphasis this year on the old vine areas which I had not touched before, I think there will be about 500 new plants to put in the ground come April.

For the moment, thoughts turn to olives and OLIVE OIL. Due to the heavy snowfall last winter, the olive trees took a beating, and I had to do some heavy pruning to help them out. The result of that, however, has been a tremendous fruit set. I am thinking that I should get about 6-8 times the olives I have been getting in years past, so there will be plenty of Mas de la Lionne Huile d'Olive de la Domaine to go around this year; maybe even enough for me to keep a bottle!

All for now, I need to get back out on the back-hoe.