Poppyseed Cellars

The sauv blanc needs bottling; we should be drinking it already.

Since the free SO2 was so low (3 mg/L), I racked 6 gallon carboy and 1 gallon jug into another 6 gallon carboy, putting in 30 mg/L SO2. Nothing worked right; my racking siphon was missing parts; the pump injected air. I finished anyways, cleaned up and bottled the extra 2 bottles.

We will drink it on our 4 family camping trip this weekend.

Also tasted and tested (Vinquiry) the ’10 sauvignon blanc. It was pretty crisp, with strong tropical fruit, like pineapple. Still clody, but I am going to skip the fining.

The free SO2 was 3 mg/L, which is way too low. I need it up at 30 mg/L. I will have to rack the carboy and jug into a new container to mix the SO2, wait a day or two, and then bottle. I am way late on the bottling. Most folks are drinking their SB by now!

I went out to taste and top off on Sunday afternoon. All is well with the ’10 syrah. The wine in the 30 gallon is already a little smoother if that is possible. Better mouth feel, and a more complex nose. The fruit is not so strong.

The three barrels took 2 bottles of wine for topping! So there has been a lot of evaporation going on. I really need to get the humidity of the cellar up.

I took a sample into Vinquiry for a free SO2 test. We hit 31 mg/L (ppm) free SO2 which is just about where we want it. So everything is good for another couple of weeks to a month.

Well, the SB never completely cleared on its own. I have decided to bottle it with a little haze. My main “inspiration” for this was a high end barrel tasting I attended where the winemaker never fines or filters his wines, even his SB!. If it is hazy, so be it. Why ruin it with fining? And his SB sells for  $28! And was amazing in terms of it’s mouthfeel and richness.

We finally moved the wine to the cellar. The days are getting warm, and we don’t want to cook the wine.

The wine in the 30 gallon new oak has had enough oak. It is much better than the wine in the 3 & 4year old barrels, but it needs to come out of the oak. Plus the other wine needs the oak.

So this  is what we did:

1. Pump the 13 and 15 gallon barrels into 2 14 gallon demijohns.
2. Pump as much as we could of the 30 gallon barrel into the 13 and 15 gallon barrels.
3. Move all barrels and demijohns to the cellar (we couldn’t have moved the full 30 gallon).
4. Pump the  demijohns into the 30 gallon barrel.
5. Top off slightly. We didn’t clean the barrels, so we didn’t lose much wine.
6. We sulphited 20 ppm more, so now this wine has seen 50 ppm total since crush.

The plan is to wait a week, and then get the sulphites measured. Then just keep topping and sulphiting. We would like to bottle the 13 gallon by the end of the summer, so we have some wine, and leave the rest until next summer.