The Primitivo Goes Purple

Today from the Suisun Valley, California. (Don't forget to click on the pics so you can see them in their completeness.)

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Nice grapes!

Nice grapes!

As grapes go, they're a great bunch.

Lovely pics, Gary, and you can see one of the infamous features of the grape: uneven ripening of the bunches. Thus, if you don't hand harvest and want no unripe flavors in your wine, you let those bunches hang until no unripe grapes remain (though you now have more than a few raisins) and then make a wine of 16..17...18% ABV.

Mark Lipton

Are those going to be thinned? That looks to me like an awful big crop load when the bunches touch like that. The hens and chicks are interesting. Is that normal for Primitivo or was there something about bloom this year that caused it?

Lovely pics, Gary, and you can see one of the infamous features of the grape: uneven ripening of the bunches. Thus, if you don't hand harvest and want no unripe flavors in your wine, you let those bunches hang until no unripe grapes remain (though you now have more than a few raisins) and then make a wine of 16..17...18% ABV.
Mark Lipton

The folks at this winery use the Primitivo to make a port-style wine. They also like to leave the grapes hanging until the pickers threaten to go home for Christmas vacation.

Are those going to be thinned? That looks to me like an awful big crop load when the bunches touch like that. The hens and chicks are interesting. Is that normal for Primitivo or was there something about bloom this year that caused it?

Good questions to which I do not have the answers. If I can slow the winemaker, Gary Galleron, down long enough, I will ask him.