From Sandra's Desk:




November 2021

Welcome Fall….and Home!

After three long months, Alan and I have returned from London.  It has taken 14 years but "Back to the Future the Musical" is finally playing to rave reviews and sold out audiences on London's West End.  It was an exciting experience for us and with a successful run, it will be something that will continue to delight audiences for a long time.  If you find yourself in London in the next nine months, please check it out.  It's worth seeing.  It's at the Adelphi Theater and runs until July 3, 2022.

While we were gone, our incredible staff kept the vineyard going strong.  The grapes have had a full growing season and we are nearly finished with our harvest.  Last weeks rains gave us a fright but this weeks warm sunshine brought us just what we've been hoping for.  Frank is spending long hours winemaking and we are very excited to taste the initial offerings.  It will be an exciting year in the wine tasting room, too.

We were pleasantly surprised to hear our Pinot Noirs were voted Best Pinot by the Carmel Pine Cone readers.  Thank you!  It's always very gratifying to be recognized by your home town.  Congratulations to Frank, Marshall and everyone at Silvestri Vineyards for your efforts.  The community supports your hard work.

As October winds down and we head into the holiday season, we wish you all a wonderful time with friends and family.  May you find blessings galore around your table and maybe a little Silvestri wine to add to the cheer.

With our best wishes,

Salute!

Sandra 

From The Winemaker:

    Happy Fall everyone! Fall is by far my favorite time of year. Changing colors, changing temperatures, the smell of fall (whatever it is, it's distinct), the World Series and of course harvest. We started the harvest season by picking the Piave Pinot Noir and Block F of Pinot Noir, which is normally a contributor to the Rising Tide Pinot. I'm super pumped to have a red grape harvest after not making any red wine last year because of all the smoke, can't wait! As always, the grapes will be hand harvested, destemmed not crushed (I do a whole berry fermentation which makes for a serious workout when it comes to doing our daily punchdowns). They are destemmed into 1 ton fermenters but generally we put in about 1600 lbs. Why? For one reason, anything above 1700 lbs, with the water additions we do, the fermenters will overflow. We add water to get the sugars to the desired numbers both for a healthy fermentation and alcohol level. You may ask " why not pick at that lower number?", and the easy answer is that lower number doesn't taste good !!!hahahah,,seriously it's important to get to perfect ripeness then scale back. The first harvest yielded around 10 fermenters. So the basics of what's going to transpire goes as follows: pick and de-stem into fermentation bins, take many hours to pick through those fermenters culling out anything that is not a grape, this is called MOG, materials other than grapes. Twenty four hours later inoculate the bins with my desired yeast. Twenty four hours from that punch that yeast in. We will do punch downs 3x a day for the next 2 weeks and then, we press. Anyway, super exciting, and can't wait for this 2021 vintage, it's going to be special.. Cheers and thanks for the continued support,,,,Frank

Back to the Future The Musical
Now Playing
at the Adelphi Theater in London

          
Back to the Future the Musical | The Official Website