Strange alien sights in the deep Napa night
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How many of you remember the X Files episode when Mulder and Scully are being chased by the helicopters through the corn fields? (It was one of the black oil episodes where they encounter an area of bright lights in the middle of nowhere. Well Napa Valley has been reminding me of that scene recently. Yesterday I drove Elizabeth to the San Francisco ferry from Calistoga at 5AM. Throughout the valley floor were these scattered pockets of bright lights casting an eerie glow into the surrounding darkness. This is night harvesting and it is seemingly becoming the accepted method for picking in our area. It is good for the grapes to be picked at the coolest temps as it arrests the tendency for spontaneous fermentation beginning in the picking bins and preserves freshness, especially in white varietals. It also improves the workflow at the winery when the first grapes arrive to be crushed at 430 AM instead of 11. Another advantage is the field workers prefer picking when it is 50 degrees rather than 90.
So if you happen to be in the valley over the next few weeks and see the lights in the early AM, it is just the latest in viticultural technology hard at work.
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