Poppyseed Cellars

We racked the syrah off of the copper fining sediment today. It went pretty well. The wine has great aromas, and tastes good. It has good acidity; some of that will come off during the MLF.

We ended up with all three oak barrels full, plus a 1 gallon jug, and a bottle for topping in the short term.

We inoculated everthing with malolactic bacteria. I mixed 2.5 g of the bacteria into 50 mL.

• 110L barrel: 22 mL MLB solution
• 50L barrel: 11 mL MLB solution
• 55L barrel: 11 mL MLB solution
• 1 gallon jug: 1 mL MLB
• bottle: 1 mL MLB

After the last racking, we had taken all of the excess gross lees and wine and put it into one of the 14 gallon demijohns. We let it settle, and racked it also today, for three more gallons. We put in 4.5 mL 1% CuSO4 (1.0 ppm) to take the H2S out of it. In a week or so, we will rack it and use it for barrel topping for the next year.

I apparently didn’t note it, but I put in 0.5 ppm copper sulphate, at least a week ago, for the H2S problem.

We racked the pinot off of the copper sediment today, after finishing the racking of the syrah. I put two new French oak staves into the carboy.

The pinot doesn’t have a strong nose at this point. We’ll see if it comes later.

I also added 5 mL of Enoferm Alpha malolactic bacteria, to get the malolactic fermentation underway. Now just let it sit for a few months.

We racked the wine off of the gross lees.

• We racked each container into the bin we used for fermenting, so that the wine would be well mixed.
• We ended up with ~240 liters of wine.
• We did a Cu fining bench trial, using a control, 0.5 ppm, and 1.0 ppm as our samples.
  • We chose to go with the 1.0 ppm for the following reasons
    •  Slight improvement of the nose of the 1.0 over the 0.5 ppm.
    • We were worse off than last year, where we ended up doing a total addition of 0.9 ppm.
    • We decided that if it is not too expensive, we will also have  residual copper test done on this wine, after it has been racked again.
  • Addition calculation:
    • 240L of wine
    • 0.389 mL/L 1% CuSO4 solution = 1.0 ppm
    • 0.389 * 240 = 93.4 mL
  • We added 93 mL of 1% CuSO4 solution to the bin, and mixed well.
• Finally, we pumped the wine back into the following, for a total of ~224 L. This means the measurement scale on the fermenting bin is off a little…
  • 110 L barrel (30 gallon)
  • 50 L barrel (13.2 gallon)
  • 57 L barrel (15 gallon)
  • 1 1 gallon jug (~3.5 L)
  • 1 3/4 gallon jug (~ 3 L)

We are doing ~250L of syrah this year. We have a 3 year old 50L French Oak barrel, and a 2 year old 55L French Oak barrel. These are getting a bit old, and we won’t get all that much oak from them, plus that is nowhere near enough capacity.

So we decided to buy a new 110L French oak barrel. We bought it from Tonnellerie Radoux, a French cooperage with a US subsidiary based here in Santa Rosa. You can see it in the back of the other containers in this picture:

The cooperage is not what I expected…at least not up front.  They are way back in an airport business park. Looks like just another office building, except for the barrel outside the front door. Even inside, the customer space looks like an office, but with lots of barrel samples and posters and artwork. But you can hear the saws going behind one of the doors. And if you peek through the door, you see where they are made. Quite something, and would be a great tour.

Our barrel is French oak, with a tight grain, and a medium+ toast. The tight grain means that it is much slower to release it’s tannins and oak flavors into the wine. It really is meant for reds that will be aged for 12-24 months, which is what we are planning. If we get too much oak, we can swap out the wine that is in the older barrels.

The medium+ toast will give us “The apex of aromatic potential with a rich and complex sensorial contribution (pronounced vanilla, sweet chocolate, maple syrup, lactones and spice). Tannin potential is reduced but still present.”

There you have it in Radoux’s own marketing words…the apex of aromatic potential!

This is a first draft for this post. I will be amending it…

Pressed today into the following containers:

1. 14 gallon demijohn
2. 14 gallon demijohn
3. 15 gallon 4 year old barrel
4. 13 gallon 3 year old oak barrel
5. 6.5 gallon glass craboy
6. 6 gallon glass carboy
7. 5 gallon glass carboy
8. 3 gallon glass carboy

That adds up to 76.5 gallons of wine! That will drop a lot with racking, but it is still a lot. The goal is to end up in:

1. 30 gallon new French oak barrel
2. 15 gallon barrel
3. 13 gallons barrel
4. Some in glass for topping off the next to years.

That is 58 gallons. I think we easily have that. We are going to use some of the glass…

There was no apparent H2S smell either. It must have all blown off with the Co2 of the ferment. It is odd because we smelled it daily, although be the end of punching down it was usually gone.

Here is a record of the punching down..