It's Harvest time here in Wine Country! We wait all year for our one chance to create beautiful wine for you...and you're coming along for the day! Ride along with Michael and I for the pick, sorting and extra special crush (hint: STOMP) that happened on September 9th. You'll hear:

• The vineyard crew hand picking our Sangiovese grapes
• A special check in with our growers Joe and Travis Ramazzotti
• The sorting process that only allow the BEST grapes into the mix
• How I react to spiders in my hair
• Our creative solution(PIVOT!) to crush the grapes this year (Lucy would be proud)
• All of the emotions that come along with Harvest Day

If you'd like to SEE what you're listening to, check out and FOLLOW our Sollevato Instagram for pictures and videos of Harvest Day.

Our tiny production sustainably produced wine, 2021 Sollevato Sangiovese , just received a Gold Medal and 92 point rating in the Orange County Wine Competition! Order online and Use code PODLISTENER for 10% off your order.

If you'd like to Support the Podcast, you can buy me a glass of wine and get a shoutout on a future episode.

Check out our Sponsor American Olive Farmer and use the code SipWithNikki for $10 off your order of their fantastic olive oils, vinegars and raw olives for brining!

Questions? Comments? Guest requests? nikki@sipwithnikki.com

Some clusters, sometimes they just look like they just didn't fully form.

So we want to pull those out.

And that's what we're doing by hand.

Luckily the conveyor belt is moving pretty slowly.

It's not like Lucy and Ethel stuffing chocolate in their bras.

Hello, and welcome to Sip with Nikki.

If you are a new listener, so excited to have you here.

Thanks for joining the party.

I'm your host, Nikki Lamberti.

And for my old friends, welcome back.

I see you.

I appreciate you and I'm so excited that you're back.

For more, I wanna give a shout out to a very loyal listener, Jeff in Southern California.

He listened to the Pet Nut episode and recently went to Trader Joe's, bought some, paired it with pizza, and said it was a fantastic combination.

So thank you, Jeff, for not only listening, but for being an angel and supporting the podcast.

You definitely bought me a glass of wine on my birthday.

And I appreciate that.

If you'd like to be an angel of the podcast, like Jeff, just look at the link right in the show notes of this episode, click on support the podcast, and you can buy me a glass of wine as well.

So it is such an exciting time here in California wine country because it's harvest and this only happens once a year and it is kind of like the Super Bowl for those of us who are in the wine world, especially if you make wine.

And this past Monday, Michael and I had our Super Bowl or our harvest for our 2024 San Gervasi.

Now, if you're a new listener, what you might not know is that my partner Michael and I have a small wine brand and we make our wine in a method that's called a custom crush.

So a custom crush is when you don't necessarily 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 Solovato label in this custom crush method.

And so our grower is the Ramazzotti 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 pounds 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 Sabores, the three flavors.

So this week you're coming along for Harvest Day.

There's a couple of pieces and parts, and I'll explain as we go.

But the morning, as you're listening in, 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 you have a little curved knife and you literally pick the grapes cluster by cluster, drop them into a bin, not on like a bus tub from a restaurant, and then once your bin is full you dump that in the tractor bin and get a fresh one.

And that's how it's done.

So that's what you're going to hear.

And I'm so excited to bring you along in the field on location to harvest day 2024.

So it's

September 9th, 9 a.

m.

It's about 60 degrees out.

Beautiful clear morning.

Good morning.

Hola.

Morning.

What's up, sir?

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

How's everything?

You guys made it just in time.

Perfect.

We're

good, yeah?

We're good, yeah.

Yeah, he said that it's ours.

This is yours.

Woo!

This is it right here.

So you got this beautiful bottom section.

Started like right at the center over there.

So we got that, and then we just filled it right here with this little heavier section.

So, cause that one is nice.

Very low.

That one is very ripe.

This is a little less ripe here, so you combine the two.

Nice.

What do you think?

Like, high and low?

Um, if you had 25 and a half, 26

last

week, that was last week.

So it might even be higher than that, than that.

So

it's all right.

We know how to work with that.

Do you know

how to work with

that?

podcast snippets.

So are you okay since you're already a celebrity on the podcast?

Since

nobody can see me right now.

As long as it's all audio, 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

if you guys take a look, so obviously these berries here are a little plumper, a little heavier.

These are little, these are typically the less ripe section.

If you walk up a little further, you'll see.

The little smaller berries with the little dimples in them, those are, and taste the difference between the two, those are really sweet, you get all like the baking spice flavors in those.

I mean that's delicious too though.

Oh, I mean they're delicious.

This, this is incredible.

So

what a gorgeous day.

Oh my god, it's so nice.

What are you picking besides?

They're all,

they're all Sangiovese.

So

only Sangiovese today?

Mm hmm.

This is what you wait for all year.

Well please take, walk around a little bit.

Yeah.

Grab your pictures.

I'm gonna pull, I'm gonna come out and then I'll meet you guys back at the van.

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 this like, the pace of how this guy is picking with his knife right now, it's like this.

Pick, pick, pick, pick, pick.

Those are all clusters hitting the bins.

There's probably about eight guys working right now.

You guys

are fast.

Now

I'm walking down the hill.

Gracias amigas.

Thank you.

Good work.

Thank you.

I say fun because I didn't have to do it, right?

I just got to watch.

I did pick our first vintage, 2019, but it was only half a ton.

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?

Do you have a count?

I can't even remember when I planted it.

I think it was 1989.

Yeah?

Yeah.

So that would be 35?

Yeah, 35 years.

Right?

Yeah.

So happy

35 years.

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.

Yeah.

Picked that little half.

So this is, uh, our five year anniversary, uh, vintage.

So thank you.

Yeah.

Isn't that something?

Yeah.

But I have been in business since 82.

Yeah.

Actually, I, 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.

Mm-Hmm.

. 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.

No,

he's really into it.

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

That's

why we still haven't quit our day jobs, either one of

us.

That's why we're trying to make enough money We just want to a point where it supports itself.

Exactly.

That's, that's, that's the point.

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.

We

really appreciate you, Jo.

Oh my God, you guys.

It's actually nice to have met you, both of you.

Thank you.

All right, drive 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 Napa 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 this, 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, Catherine, 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.

Cause it's a cool way to kick off the sorting.

So here we go.

1, 2, 3.

Harvest 2024.

Ready?

Michael's got the pitch for 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 mog, m o g, material other than grapes.

Yeah, sometimes you'll see a cluster that is Is

that a good pace for you guys or do you want me to

Maybe a little slower.

Okay.

That is um, 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, because 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 slowly.

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 16.

Those are translucent there.

Yeah.

And it's funny, sometimes you'll have like a perfectly purple cluster.

Like

that?

That's a good question.

And then you'll have like one green grape.

And it's like, which of these things is doing it?

Something that 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.

You 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 talented 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.

Once they've made the cut, me on one side and Doris from the Trace the Boris 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 grapevine stems look like, when they're, they're called jacks.

Cause that's totally what they look like.

They look like you're a kid and you have the bag with jacks.

So this process goes fairly quickly for us because we literally are just doing 2000 pounds.

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, so it's funny.

It gives me like a throwback.

So I helped with the harvest here at Tres Sabores in 2012.

I had just moved from Orlando on October 1st.

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.

How many years have you been here?

Fifteen.

Fifteen years.

So I was here 12 years ago, 2012, doing this with her, helping them with their fruit.

And it's very cool because now it's my fruit.

It feels different when it's yours.

It feels different when you're paid for it out of your account.

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, and it fits.

It's Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, which is, this is San Gervasi 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 300 bottles.

I'm narrating for the podcast.

She's like, why are you talking continuously?

Not that that's any different.

Because she's crazy.

Stop it.

I'm not crazy.

I like to talk.

In episode 20, I interviewed Travis Ramazzotti, 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're almost to the bottom.

We're 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 gonna need you to calm down, sir.

Um, 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 right now is water that would dilute 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 of 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 Solovato Wines Instagram though.

I'll make a highlight bubble for, um, Harvest 2024.

And then you can see the video like of what you're hearing, but what you'll see is that wine grape.

Grapes are small, like much smaller than grapes that we are familiar with, you know, from the store 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 handfuls of individual grapes from the bottom of the bin.

I'll jump in and do it with my feet this year.

Alright, so we're going to pause.

Miguel will forklift the second bin over and we'll do the same thing.

So, halfway point.

Thousand

pounds.

Look at 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 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 servable differences.

I think these clusters are better.

These

clusters look, um, tighter.

Yeah.

Right.

Juicier.

Juicier.

Oh, thank you.

That reminds me.

That's what I lost my train of thought before.

I was talking about, how do you know if you're getting, you know, two or three barrels from a ton?

Well, not all grapes have the same.

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.

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 Carrie 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 part, what they leave behind is called the second growth.

So when you look at a vine, all the clusters of grapes that, 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's 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.

Um, 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 cause 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 just the three of us by hand let's get the job done Michael, you're getting faster.

Slow your roll.

Miguel.

All you

gotta say is, Párate, párate.

It's cause I'm going more for the size of scoop than

Oh, have you changed your technique?

You notice?

Scoop size?

It's been very nice and consistent.

Yeah, but you got excited.

It got a little fast there.

Tractor coming in behind us from their vineyard.

It's um, Zinfandel, I believe, that their crew is picking for their wine.

Busy day here today.

You okay?

I think I should just come for this just to work out, huh?

Good to the last drop.

Good job.

And that is 2024.

Sorting.

Dumb.

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 you'll hear us try to do it manually.

And then we totally have to pivot.

Oh, fuck no.

Should be able to use like a cordless drill and potato masher.

This is like nothing.

This ain't doing shit to it.

Other than just getting it dirty.

I

think I should get in

there.

But you have jeans.

Should've brought shorts.

Go do it.

It's better than nothing.

Gotta be out here in my boxer briefs and my wine.

So, this doesn't happen every year.

I've done this once.

But, Thanks.

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 of ozonated water.

Fresh pedicure.

It's actually Sangiovese color, I think.

It's like a ball pit, but better.

Alright, 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 going to like 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.

Whoa, 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, it could be literally to my, to my belly button.

I could get it to my mid thighs.

You should, 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.

Like Lucy, like.

That's what everybody wants you to do.

But

yeah,

they're doing it in five pounds of grapes, not 1000.

I'm going to fall so far down.

We're going to, we're going to stop the podcast recording.

Cause the arguing is happening now.

Okay.

Bye.

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 wanted you to 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.

So now add two years to the clock before this 2024 Sangiovese that you just heard starting its journey will be in the bottle and be available.

But currently at the time of this recording, we have a little bit of our 2021 Sangiovese available on solovato wines.

com check the link in the show notes and make sure at checkout, you use the code pod listener, and I will give you 10 percent off your wine order to thank you for being a podcast listener.

Our Sangiovese is so delicious with.

all of the classic Italian pairings like pizza, carbonara, bolognese, but also just charcuterie.

And you know, one of the things that people love about our wine is it's really versatile because it's a medium bodied, medium tannin, fruit driven red wine.

So really can pair 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, Solovato 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.

Dadadadadadadadada Dadadadadada Wooooaaaah Wa wa wa wa wa Wah wawawawawawawah Um,