It's the earliest harvest in almost 40 years, and we are hustling over here! In honor of this exciting time, I'm re-sharing and encore episode from Harvest 2024, where we brought the mics into the field to capture it — hand-picked Sangiovese, a grateful partnership with our grape growers, the Ramazzotti family, and the moment our crusher quit and I had to get in barefoot to save the day.

See more episode details and pics and video from behind the scenes here.

Follow Sollevato on IG for more behind the scenes harvest footage!

Follow Nikki on Instagram for more behind the scenes look at life in Wine Country

Other Links and Resources:

Learn more about Nikki's new favorite wine app, Sommo and download the app here! Use code NIKKI for a free month of Premium Access.

Sollevato Wines: We have limited 92-point 2023 Sangiovese and 91 point Grenache available and our 2023 Petite Sirah (bold, inky, and great for BBQ season) is also coming this fall. Sign up for the mailing list to be the first to know.

Use code PODLISTENER for 10% off all of Nikki's wines on sollevatowines.com

If you'd like to Support the Podcast, you can buy us a glass of wine as thank you for over 100 episodes of free and entertaining (I hope) content!

Enjoy some of MY FAVORITE THINGS from our Sponsors:

Use my VIP Friends and Family Link to sign up for Wine Spies! And use the coupon code NIKKI for $50 off your order of $200 or more!

You NEED some delicious California Olive Oil from our awesome sponsor American Olive Farmer. Use code SipWithNikki for $10 off your order!

I just changed my pants. Luckily, I had workout pants in the car. I've got them hiked up over my knee. I'm washing my feet in a bucket. Ozonated water.

Just so everyone knows, we're very sanitary around here.

Fresh pedicure. It's actually Sangiovese color. I think it's like a ball pit, but better. All right, so I am literally knee deep. Ooh. And it's cold.

And it's kind of like when you're in snow and you think you're gonna stay on the top, but then it breaks through and you kind of, like, sink down. I wonder what the mic will pick up.

Well, hello there. Welcome to this week's Sip with Nikki. I'm Nikki Lamberti, coming to you from the busy hustle in and bustle in Sonoma County.

That's right, it is August 24th, and we are already in the middle of harvest. What in the world? It's actually the earliest harvest in this area, Napa, Sonoma, and most of California in almost 40 years.

Almost a month ahead of schedule. And it's due to some interesting weather that we had in the spring when the vines were pollinating and the fruit was becoming fruit. And here we are.

So, ready or not, harvest is on. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. So glad that you found us.

My partner Michael and I make wine here in Napa and Sonoma, and our brand, Solevato, focuses on Sangiovese Grenache and also petite Syrah.

So much has happened in the last couple weeks since I sat in front of this microphone, and I apologize, it took me a little longer to get here than planned because we're in the middle of harvest. But exciting news. If you don't follow us on social media, then maybe you haven't heard.

You guys already know it's good, but it's kind of cool to hear that the official judges who do this for a living agreed and put us in that excellent bracket.

If you want to grab some for yourself before the word is out, because there's not much left, visit Sollevato wines.com and make sure that you use the discount code podlistener for 10% off your order. And we can ship to most states in the U.S. so, on Friday, August 14th, we harvested one and a half tons of beautiful Sangiovese grapes.

And that fermentation is going and actually almost complete. And then the next few days, I'll already have that pressed off and in the barrel.

And then just two days ago, we harvested some Grenache from the same area of the Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma county for our second ever. I sound like Oprah. You're getting. You're getting all getting.

We made our very first vintage of a beautiful dry rose of Grenache last year, and we should have done more. It was only about 25 cases, and y' all drank it. It's gone.

So good news is we're doing it again back by popular demand, and we have doubled the volume, so we are doing about 50 cases, and that should be ready in about the next six months or so. That's the great thing about the Runway. And the time to the bottle is a lot shorter than red wine, so we don't have to be as patient.

Speaking of, we are doing our first sip with Nikki, the tasting room virtual tasting this Thursday. I've got a group of people who signed up to do the first sip sip tasting with our very cool custom tasting kits through my partnership with Vinebox.

And I can't wait to get on Zoom with everybody, do our pairings, and taste three very different from three very different parts of the world. If you'd like to get on the waiting list for our next virtual tasting, reach out to me.

Either email nikkiipwithnikki.com or you can DM me through Facebook or Instagram, and I'll add you to the waiting list for the next tasting that we'll do, which will be a different theme.

So in honor of being in the middle of harvest, I thought it might be fun to reshare the episode that I put out almost two years ago where I took all the recording equipment into the vineyard the morning of the pick and then continued to record as we brought the grapes in to the winery where we make them.

And you get a firsthand listen where I put you in the surroundings so you get to hear the guys hand picking all of the grapes and the process of de stemming and crushing.

And spoiler alert, we had a little bit of a mishap this particular year, so you'll hear how we got creative to solve for some equipment that was not being our friends that day.

And I've had a lot of great feedback about this episode over the years because I know you're all so curious about what what it's like to actually be Here in the middle of Harvest and make wine. I know we have a lot of new listeners since then, so in case you didn't hear this, I've re edited. Re edited. Is that a word?

I have re edited it. Say that three times fast. Cause I'm a much better editor than I was two years ago, and I hope that you enjoy being in the middle of all of it.

If just hearing the sounds is a tease, make sure that you check out our Instagram Solevato wines. Sollevato is Italian for joyful and uplifted. And it's spelled S O L L E V A T O.

Find and follow there because I am posting daily about our current harvest.

And there's some highlight bubbles where you can go back and actually see some fun footage from what you're listening to today while you're on Instagram. Find me. Give me a follow Nikki Lamberti, because I've got some fun things going on and I would love for you to check them out.

So here we go with Crush Hour. So it is such an exciting time here in California wine country because it's harvest and this only happens once a year.

So a custom crush is when you don't own a vineyard, but you purchase grapes from a grower and you can purchase them by the half ton, full ton. That's typically how it's done.

And then you make your wine at someone else's winery or a crush facility where you basically pay rent to use the space and the equipment. So we are celebrating five years of making wine for the Solevaccio label. And so our grower is the Ramazotti family, Joe and his son Travis.

I actually interviewed Travis back in episode number 20, so check that out.

And so on Monday morning, we showed up at their vineyard bright and early with our trailer, and their team picked a full ton, £2,000 of Sangiovese grapes for us.

And then we drove said grapes about 45 minutes to St. Helena, which is in the Napa Valley, to the winery where we make our wine, which is called Tres, the Three Flavors. The first segment is going to kick off with sounds of the vineyard and listening to everything being hand picked.

So most premium wines, which is the category that we fall into, everything is picked by hand.

So it's September 9th, 9am it's about 60 degrees out. Beautiful clear morning. Good morning. Hola. Morning. Buenos dias. What's up, sir? Good morning.

Good morning.

Good to see you.

Good to see you. You guys made it just in time.

Perfect.

Is it right here?

So you got this beautiful bottom section, little podcast snippets. So are you okay since you're already a celebrity on the podcast?

Since nobody can see me right now, it's fine.

Yes. It's all audio, just like the first time that you rocked it. Yeah, I thought it'd be fun to hear some sounds. And a gorgeous day. Oh, my God.

So nice.

This is what you wait for all year.

Well, please take walk around a little.

Bit, grab your pictures.

I'm going to come out, and then I'll meet you guys back in the day.

Okay. Walking up a steep slope on their estate in their house is at the top of the hill. Try not to huff and puff too much into the microphone. So they're picking the upper hillside.

So the noise you hear are the plastic picking bins that they kick along the ground with their feet as they fill them, and then they also toss them between the rows to each other to dump in the tractor. And then they toss them back to each other empty to fill.

And it's like the pace of how this guy is picking with his knife right now, it's like this pick, pick, pick. Those are all clusters hitting the bins. Probably about eight guys working, right? Those are fast. Now I'm walking down the hill. Gracias, amigos.

Thank you. Good work.

Thank you.

It was my friend Allison and I, and then also Joe Ramazzotti and his wife Norma. They helped us, but even that took, like, oh, my gosh, three hours. So we are nowhere at the pace of his team.

So we are so grateful to them for all their work. So in the next segment, you'll hear us meeting Joe at our pickup truck, where we've loaded the bins on and just have a brief conversation with him. How many years of harvest is this for you here? Do you have a count?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that would be 35.

Yeah. 35 Years, right?

Yeah. So happy 35 years.

Thank you.

This is our fifth year, thanks to you. 19 Was the first half ton when. Allison and I and you and Norma. Picked the half ton. Pick that little half ton. So this is our five year anniversary vintage. So thank you.

Yeah. Isn't that something?

Yeah.

But I have been in business since 82.

Yeah.

Actually, I worked in the vineyards all my life. Then I went off to college and then did.

I told you, I logged for two years out in Annapolis and then I had a food distributing business for about three years. Yeah.

It seems like everyone in wine has always done something else. Yeah. Which is cool. I like that.

Travis did an awesome job sharing the family story and the family history in that podcast that we did with him a couple months ago. He did a really good job from the family getting here and the whole thing.

I told him, I said that, dude, it's a great life, and you can make some money out of it.

That's why we still haven't quit our day jobs, either one. That's why we're trying to make enough money. We just want to get it to a point where it supports itself.

Exactly. That's the joy.

You can get it to that point.

Exactly. You're absolutely right.

Well, thank you. We got to take our yearly selfie of the three of us, and then we'll get out of your hair, take these grapes to St. Helena. Really appreciate you, Joe.

You guys, it's actually nice to meet you, both of you.

Thank you.

All right. Ride carefully.

Thank you. We couldn't do it without you. Thank you.

Bye.

So we drove our trailer about 45 minutes from Sonoma county to Nepa County.

And it's funny, as you make that drive at this time of year, you pass so many other big, small pickup trucks, trailers, flatbeds, with just tons and tons of grapes just moving all around these valleys right now. It's such a fun thing to see.

But when we arrived at Tres Sabores, Miguel, who is the assistant winemaker there, he forklifted the bins out of our trailer. And you'll hear Michael and I starting the sorting and crushing process.

One thing to know is when we are recording, we both have separate lapel mics on. And one of the things that Our previous producer, Katherine, taught me is when you both start recording, you're supposed to clap at the same time.

And then when you're editing your audio, it's how you match them up and make sure that they're aligned. That's why they do the clapboard action. That's where that comes from. I never knew that.

So I usually cut that out, but I like this one, so I'm going to leave it in because it's a cool way to kick off the sorting. So Here we go. 1, 2, 3, Harvest. 20, 24. You ready?

Michael's got the pitchfork. Doris is helping. Let's do it, girl.

So we've got a conveyor belt moving in front of us, and we have bins at our feet to toss the grapes that we don't want. Leaves, sticks, spiders. It's called moth material. Other than grapes. Yeah. Sometimes you'll see a cluster that is. Is that a good pace for you. Guys or want me to maybe a little slower? Okay.

That is. The skins are very translucent, and that is a sign that they're not fully ripe. So we pull those out because those are going to have higher acidity.

The sugars didn't catch up to where they needed to be, and sometimes how the fruit sets. So we pull those out because we don't want that extra acidity. A little bit of raisins is okay. Over here with the pitchfork throwing this.

Stuff down because it'll all kind of balance out. But some clusters, sometimes they just look like they just didn't fully form, and so we want to pull those out, and that's what we're doing by hand.

Luckily, the conveyor belt is moving pretty slow. It's not like Lucy and Ethel stuffing chocolate in their bras. Slower than that. Michael, how do you think it looks? Looks good. Yeah. Looks good. Yeah. This pick was just exactly a week earlier this year in the same vineyard. Last year, it was September 16th.

Those are translucent there.

Yeah. And it's funny, sometimes you'll have, like, a perfectly purple, like that cluster, and then you'll have, like, one. One green grape.

It is like which of these things is doing its own thing? It just doesn't belong. It's called a shot berry. Sometimes when just not every single grape position set or formed, you would pull that out.

Michael, you're trying to do both things. Yeah. Want me to go slower? I'm trying to help out here.

Some of these don't quite look like raisins, but a little bit of dimpling in the skin, and that's Okay. I don't like dimpling in my skin, but on the crepes it's okay. Oh, and yes, my favorite is when we have spiders.

It's like the one time that I'm tolerant of spiders, but I mean, that's a good thing. We just had some ladybugs in there. That's what you want. That's a sign of a healthy vineyard, a healthy ecosystem. Right.

Not using any harsh chemicals or pesticides. So you, you want to see life.

And then as these pass by, once they've made the cut, me on one side and Norris from the Trace of Ours team, she's on the other side, Michael's at the end. They go up this electronic ladder and get de stemmed. So when we're doing this right now, when we're sorting, there's still whole clusters.

Once the grapes have been gently vibrated off the stem. When you see, if you think about, like what a grapevine stems look like and they're, they're called jacks because that's totally what they look like.

They look like when you're a kid and you have a bag with jacks. So this process goes fairly quickly for us because we literally are just doing £2,000.

But, you know, up at Pride, we might do 15, 20 tons today up there. So that's an all day thing. But we're already at a third of the way through the first bin. A bin is a half ton, so a thousand pounds.

I didn't have a job at Pride lined up yet, and I helped here for a couple weeks. And I spent a lot of time standing at this sorting table with Doris. Doris. 15. 15 Years.

Thousands of dollars, by the way.

So for a ton of fruit out here, depending on what it is from Napa and Sonoma, it can be anywhere from $3,000 a ton to $13,000 a ton if it's Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, which is. This is Sangiovese from the Dry Creek area. From a ton, we get about between two and three barrels of wine. Spider just flew in my hair. Love it.

A barrel giving you close to 25 cases, which is close to 3, 300 bottles. I'm narrating for the podcast. She's like, why are you talking continuously? Not that that's any different. Stop it. I'm not crazy. I like to Talk.

In episode 20, I interviewed Travis Ramazotti. So he's the second generation. And he talks about how his family got started, how his father Joe came from Italy.

And we're just so grateful to them because there's not a lot of this grape Sangiovese growing in California. And they make their own wine out of this, which we started drinking years ago. A lot different than last year.

Last year we picked a week later and we were barely at 23. So that just shows you Mother Nature's roller coaster. You almost to the bottom. Word to the shovel.

The shovel height. Oh, see, now we got a lot of loose berries at the bottom that just kind of released themselves. Ooh, that looks so pretty. Sort the grapes. I want individually grapes sorted.

All right, I'm going to need you to calm down, sir. There is no washing or rinsing process. People have asked me that before. Like, do you wash the grapes? We don't. Nobody does. You don't. The last thing that you want to. Introduce bugs at all, bugs and all,. Is water that would dilute the sugars.

That you've been waiting and waiting. So there is no washing. These are a little bit wet, but that's mostly juice. But creating alcohol.

So once we get fermentation going in a couple days and there's alcohol present, that will essentially sanitize or kill anything that you don't want. Look at our Instagram. Look at the Solobato wines Instagram.

And juice and jelly. Wine grapes are pretty small. Now.

The Sangiovese is a medium sized grape. Big clusters. Now Michael is literally like throwing good to the last berry handfuls of individual grapes from the bottom of the bin.

I'll jump in and do with my feet this year. Stay tuned. All right, so we're gonna pause. Miguel will forklift the second bin over and we'll do the same thing. So halfway point. Thousand pounds. Look it. Exercise goal achieved.

Here we go. Second half. What's interesting is these could be different because these two bins came from two different rows, rows in their vineyard. Table's on.

So yeah, they're just from like a hillier spot and a lower spot within the same vineyard. So it will be interesting to see if there's differences. I think these clusters are better. These clusters look tighter. Yeah, right. Juicier.

Juicier. Oh, thank you. That reminds me, that's what I lost my train of thought before. I was talking, talking about how do you know if you're getting two or. Three barrels from a ton? Well, not all grapes have the same juiciness. Not all grapes are created equal.

Right. So we'll have to see. You could have the same tonnage, but your volume will be different. All in a good shape, huh? That was a cameo from Julie Johnson.

Just like that, she's gone. That's how it is with Julie, owner, winemaker. Here we had a listener question from Kerry Janes. Listener questions.

She wanted to know, do they leave behind some grapes on the vine that don't look good? And yes, Carrie, the answer is yes. So there's kind of the first sort of quality assurance sort happens at the pick, but it's really fast.

Right.

So for the most, what they leave behind is called the second growth. So when you look at a vine, all the clusters of grapes that you're. Picking for the wine are kind of.

In a lower position, but then you'll look up a long branch, higher position, and there'll be more clusters, but they're not as big. They're usually not fully formed. And that called the second crop or second growth, they typically don't pick those.

They're not the same sugars and development. Now when I started making wine at home in buckets 10 years ago, that's what I would make my at home wine with. Those vineyards would let me go in.

And pick what was left behind. So it's good for practicing. It still makes drinkable wine, but for premium wine, you leave that behind. So great question, Carrie.

There are some fancy wineries or even smaller boutique wineries that because of the weather on a certain year and how the crop looks, they will use an optical sorter that would be at the end of this table and it actually scans like with a laser, the grapes and you calibrate the sorter to certain density, shape, size, so the eye would very quickly recognize those translucent high acid. And then it actually uses a puff of air like almost sounds like popcorn. And it literally pushes them off to the side. They don't get used again.

This fruit looks really good, really clean, really even for just the three of us. By Hand. Let's get the job done. Michael, you're getting faster. Slow your roll, Miguel. All you're gonna see is. Cause I'm going more for the size of scoop than. Oh, have you changed your technique?

You notice it's nice. It's been very nice and consistent.

Yeah, but you got excited. It got a bit little fast there. Tractor coming in behind us from their vineyard with some zinfandel.

I believe that their crew is picking for their wine. Busy day here today. I think I should just come for this. Just to work out, huh? Good to the last drop.

Good job. And that is 20, 24 sorting done. Now we're going to get in there with our feet sticky. Very sticky. High five.

So what you'll hear next is uncensored. So if there are little ears nearby. Just a heads up. But we then tried to essentially punch down the grapes with the tool.

That's like a potato masher on a long handle. But the grapes were still pretty whole and intact because the crusher portion of the apparatus was not functioning.

So.

So you'll hear us try to do it manually and then we totally have to pivot.

No.

Should be able to use, like a cordless drill and potato masher. This is like nothing. This ain't doing to it other than just getting it dirty. I think I should get in there.

But you have have jeans. Should have brought shorts. Go do it. It's better than nothing. Can be out here in my boxer briefs, in my wife.

So this doesn't happen every year. I've done this once, but their crushing mechanism on their processing line is not working today.

And we need to get these broken up so they can start to release their sugars so we can get a good sample of what's happening. So I'm getting in with my feet. I just changed my pants.

Luckily, I had workout pants in the car. I've got them hiked up over my knee. I'm washing my feet in a bucket. Ozonated water just so every nose. Very sanitary around here.

Fresh pedicure. It's actually Sangiovese color. I think it's like a ball pit, but better. All right. So I am literally knee deep. Oh, and it's cold.

And it's kind of like when you're in snow and you think you're going to stay on the top, but then it breaks through and you're like, oh, shit. I'm up to my knee and you kind of like sink down. I wonder what the mic will pick up. Well, I went far. It's like, suction. Are you satisfied by the feet stomping?

It's hard. Like, I have to hold myself up or I'm going to sink too far down. I could be like death by grapes. It could be literally to my. To my belly button. I could get it to my mid thighs. You should get to work.

Oh, like, if I stay in one place, it's like when you're just standing in the sand. We got juice. It's a start.

Well, this gets it started. To try to do it by hand from whole grape, it's really hard. You need a lot of pressure. So this will get it, like, started,. And then we can do it with the. We're not even drinking. We haven't even had a sip of wine today. All right, this is good.

We got.

We got juice now. All right, I'm going deep. It's going deeper now. It feels good. I can't even do, like, the. Cause I'll fall, too. How can I do what? Like, Lucy? Like, that's what everybody wants you to do, but it's like half a wine barrel. Yeah.

They're doing it in five pounds of grapes, not 1,000. I'm gonna fall so far down. My foot is at D level. We're gonna stop the podcast for recording because the arguing is happening now. Okay, bye. You can edit that.

So as you hear, it was a long day, and it was an exciting day, but at moments, the tensions were flowing. I think we need to come up with a new term. Like, instead of reality tv, it's reality audio, but uncensored, real.

I wondered if you feel all of the emotion of the day. So that is our harvest day. And, you know, it's a labor of love. That's why we do it.

We're really passionate about it, and we love bringing this wine to people's tables.

Our Sangiovese is so delicious with all of the classic Italian pairings like pizza, carbonara, Bolognese.

And one of the things that people love about our wine is it's really versatile because it's a medium, medium bodied, medium tannin fruit driven red wine. So really compare with so many different dishes or nothing at all.

If you find yourself thinking, oh gosh, I wish I could see what they're talking about and see what they're doing, please hop on Instagram Solavato Wines I'll put the link in the show notes, follow us there and then go back and you'll be able to see lots of photos and videos from Harvest. So as always, thank you so much for listening to Harvest Day. I hope you enjoyed being in the field with us. And as always, sip well. Sam.