Poppyseed Cellars

The sauvignon blanc is being picked tomorrow morning. I am going to piggyback on this harvest, so when I get there the grapes will picked and ready. I gotta drop the kids off at school; I wouldn’t have been able to start until 9AM. They are starting at 2AM. I don’t have the numbers…so I am trusting the winemaker who ordered the picking tomorrow. The guy makes damn good wine…I should be OK.

Also, I brought the pinot in from the cold room to warm up. I’ll start the ferment tomorrow!

Each day since I started the cold soak I have gone out to the vineyard where the juice is soaking,and replaced my milk jug of ice. I have set a stainless bowl on the top of the must, and I put the ice container into it, then put the lid on. I should probably put a blanket over the top also.

The 20 gallon tub is in a cellar at the house that stays in the 60’s throughout the summer. It is a lot easier to cold soak there than in my garage.

I would like to mix in dry ice, which is what the pros do. But this cellar is not vented. How much CO2 do you get from 1 pound dry ice? I got the numbers from a dry ice MSDS…

• Density of dry ice = 97.5 lbs/cu ft
• Expansion ratio of dry ice, solid to gas = 554
• 1 lb / 97.5 lb/cu ft = .0103 cu ft dry ice
• .0103 cu ft * 554 = 5.68 cu ft CO2

It only takes about 1% CO2 in the air to start making you drowsy. If I used 10 pounds, that would be 57 cu ft of CO2. The room is maybe 1400 cu ft. That is about 4% CO2. I don’t want to take any chances…so no dry ice.

The must is currently at 60 F, which is a little warm, but no ferment has started, so I think I am OK. I added three medium toast French oak staves to the juice. I am going to leave them in for the rest of the cold soak, and the entire ferment. I can’t really do a barrel ferment, but putting in oak staves is as close as I am going to come. Wine makers say that you get better oak “integration” if you do a barrel ferment, in addition to getting better color stability, and the removal of “green” or vegetal flavors. I have not made Pinot before; I have no control; so I am just winging it!

My kids and I made it out to the vineyard by 8AM. I would like to have started at 6:30 AM, but getting the kids up and out would have been too much trouble. My in laws also came to help. My wife? She is in Paris drinking the real thing!

Picking the Pinot took about an hour. There was some turkey damage, and a lot of raisins from our big 105F heat spike a few weeks back. So, we skipped the completely raisin-ed clusters, and tried to remove as many other raisins as we could. We’ll see how it comes out.

We ended up somewhere betwenn 100 and 150 lbs, which is what I was estimating.

• Sugars were 23.5 Brix (hydrometer)
• The pH was 3.1

 The pH is a little low, although it will probably rise. The sugar was surprisingly high. I measured a few grapes on Saturday, and got 21.5 with the refractometer. I should have checked the juice with the refractometer in addition to the hydrometer. I’ll check it Monday. I will also check the pH and TA on Monday and see where it is at.

I am going to do a 4 day cold soak. So I will get some dry ice pellets and mix some in, and put a few on top to create a CO2 layer to keep the O2 off.

I think I have around 12 gallons of must. I targeted 6 gallons of final wine. I added SO2 as follows:

• 50 ppm in 6 gallons = 20 mL 10% SO2 solution

The Pinot winemaker is picking tomorrow! Yikes! My tomorrow is already busy…I’ll pick Sunday.

We did all right in the Sonoma County Harvest Fair Amateur Wine Contest. Here are the results.

My wines…

• 2009 Syrah: Silver
• 2009 Sauvignon Blanc: Bronze
• 2008 Sauvignon Blanc: Silver

So I am pretty happy, though we really wanted a gold for the Syrah. Every wine without any defects gets at least a bronze. Something is usually wrong with the wine if it gets no award.

We did our vineyard walk through today. The three winemakers who are going to make the Syrah decided how they will divide up the harvest. There was lots of concern over not getting ripe enough. The Syrah is at about 15 brix sugar. It needs to be at least 22. That’s 7 to go, and it usually takes about 1 week per 1 Brix. So we are out 7 weeks, assuming good weather, which is shaky at this point.

They talked about foliar sprays that boost sugar; they decided not to. The wines these guys sell are >$50/bottle. They need the flavors to be right. If the sugars and resultant alcohol are a little low, but the flavor is right, thay are happy. No one knew what would happen to flavors using these foliar sprays.

They were unhappy with the few green berries that are left. The problem is that the green berries will turn purple, but will never ripen. And when the berries are on the sorting table (yes, these guys sort individual berries before crushing), you can’t find the unripe ones and into the wine they go. So they would rather have a crew go through the vineyard and remove the green berries while they can see them. That is a slow process, and will cost the grower some bucks.

We are looking at the end of October at this point for the Syrah. The Pinot however will probably be ready in 2 weeks.

This is going to be a very crazy crush season. The weather sucks! We are far colder this summer than most. So the grapes are not ripening fast enough. And we may have rain this weekend. As long as it is not too much, and it warms up and dries off, we’ll be OK. Otherwise there will be unfriendly organisms growing on the grapes.

I walked the vineyard Tuesday morning, measuring the sugars and picking out the rows I want. This Saturday, the real winemakers are walking the vineyard to divvy up the grapes. My quantities are mice nuts compared to what they are making, which is mice nuts to well known wineries. 

• Syrah: 2 different vineyard blocks: 13 -18 Brix. Almost completely turned. Anything that hadn’t been more  that 50% through veraison last week was dropped. So there was a lot of fruit on the ground. What is left looks pretty good.
• Pinot: 20-22 Brix. Getting close! Everything is well through veraison. Lots of bird damage however. The vineyard has wild turkeys…maybe not for long. Early Thanksgiving anyone? The grapes tasted good. It is amazing how much more tannic the syrah skins are compared to the pinot. The seeds are partly turning brown, which is supposed to be an indicator for ripeness.
• Sauv Blanc: 15-18 Brix. The grapes have a noticeable “cat pee” taste. This somewhat common in SB. It does seem to be dissipating, as I have been tasting for a month or so.
• Zinfandel…I didn’t get up there. I’ll do that this weekend. These grapes are not sold, so I’ll have more than I can handle.

Here is my 2010 Crush Plan. Since I am making 4 wines, planning the containers and equipment is more important. I have no idea how a real winery manages all this stuff. I am glad my living is not on the line!