Poppyseed Cellars

I got to the wine room at 5:45 AM, hoping to get head start on the zin pressing. I was able to setup and clean all the equipment, and actually start pressing by the time Esteban showed up at 7AM. Then Shahrokh and a friend Ali showed up. Three  people are optimum given my equipment; a fourth person allows breaks!

The stats:

• Pressed off at 1.5 brix sugar
• We pressed into the white food grade tubs, just like the syrah.
• It required 4 press runs, with the 4th needing some pomace from the previous run to fill the  press.
• We did a final pomace only hard press, and got maybe 3 or 4 more gallons. It actually tasted pretty good, but we will keep it separate.
• 91.9 gallons of wine + gross lees.
• Free run:  60.9 gallons = 8.9+15.1+15.1+21.8
• Medium press run: 16.4 G
• Hard press:  14.6 G
• The nose on the wine was very good, with occasional whiffs of H2S. It really smelled like zin in the room. Everyone liked the taste, even at this early stage.
• Finished by 9:30 AM.
• We plan on racking into the demijohns, and transporting to  the cellar, to go into a 60 gallon French Oak ReCoop barrel on Tuesday morning. There is enough free run to fill the barrel I think, so the press run will go into glass or a second barrel. We’ll see how much we have Tuesday.

After settling for 48 hours, we racked off to a barrel on Saturday morning. Attendees: Esteban, Shahrokh, Erwin, and myself.

• We racked into 14 gallon demijohns to transport the wine to the cellar, then pumped into a 59 gallon ReCoop barrel. I once calculated inside surface area of a 59 gallon barrel: 3178 sq in. Recoop removes 1/4 inch, so that is 3178/4 = 794 cu in = 3.4 gallons of extra capacity, 62.4 gallon barrel
• We had a 3 gallon carboy of leftovers: 65.4 gallons total, so we lost about 10 gallons in gross lees.
• We will need to use some 2010 as topping wine.
• We had definite H2S going on. Sometimes it would blow off, but then come back in the settling tubs while fermenting. We will probably have to use copper again this year.

Wednesday eve…decided we needed to press off the syrah. We wanted to press sweet, and Wednesday night it was a 6 brix. Thursday morning it would be around 3…no choice but to press. We wanted to press a little sweet, as last years syrah was maybe a tad tannic, although we sure didn’t think so at a recent barrel tasting.

It was Esteban, Shahrokh and myself as cellar rats. Here are some stats:

• 8Am – 11:30 Am: 3.5 hour for 108 gallons must
• 108 gallons must pressed to ~75 gallons juice and gross lees.
• We separated the juice into three gatgories: free run, moderate press, and hard press. They all tasted good; we plan on just combining them.
• 3 press runs, plus a 4th re-pressing of all the pressed grapes. We got 5 more gallons, and it tasted pretty good.
• We started around 8AM, and finished by 11:30 AM, so 3 1/2 hours for 108 gallons must.

I finally put together a table to keep the ferment notes in. Here it is for the syrah:

We have 120 gallons must.

This is 72 gallons wine. (120 * 0.6)

A full barrel is 59 gallons. We will have 13 extra gallons; we will keep this in glass for topping, probably two large carboys. We can swap this in and out of the barrel over the next year.

We purchased a 59 gallon re-coopered French Oak medium toast barrel for ~$250 from ReCoop in Sebastopol, CA. They take used barrels, clean them, remove 1/4″ of the interior staves, and re-toast the barrel. The oak in this barrel will not be as strong, so we may be able to leave the wine in here until we bottle in a couple of years. If we do need to get it out of the barrel, we can buy a used 3 year old barrel when we need it.

I heard an interesting rule of thumb today: How long can you leave wine in a new oak barrel without it being over oaked? 1 week per gallon. So a 15  gallon barrel gets 15 weeks, and 60 gallon barrel gets over a year.

I just went out to check on the fermenting wine. In  the room I got a slight whiff of H2S. I punched down both the zin and syrah. The H2S smell dissipated.

• Zin temp ~ 70 F
• Zin sugar ~ 20 brix
• Syrah temp ~77 F
• Syrah sugar ~ 16 brix!  Wow that is going fast. It dropped 7 brix in 1 day. It will be down to 8 brix by tomorrow night if it keeps going.
• I have enough FermaidK for the zin and the syrah if need be. I will definitely add it to the zin when it gets to about 17 brix (1/3 done)
• The syrah is already past 1/3. I’ll check it in the morning, and if the H2S is stronger, then I may add a dose to the syrah.

Zin calcs:

• 121 g yeast = 121 gallons * 1 g/gallon
• 152 g GoFerm = 121 g yeast * 1.25
• 3 L H2O = 152 g GoFerm * 20 = 3040 g H2O

The zin was picked and crushed on Monday, Oct 17. It was sorted on a sorting table, then crushed into 20 gallon buckets, then transferred to a t-bin.

After completion, the height of the must in the bin was 14.5″. Inside dimension of macro bin = 44″ x 44″.

•  121.5 gallons must = 14.5in * 44in * 44in *0.00432900433  gallon/in^3
•  1243 lbs grapes = 121.5 gallons * 10.23 lbs/gallon ( based on last years must weight measurements)
• 401 mL 10% SO2 solution = 50ppm = 3.3.mL/gallon * 121.5 gallons

The syrah was picked and crushed on Tuesday, Oct 18. It was sorted on a sorting table, then crushed into 20 gallon buckets, then transferred to a macro bin.

After completion, the height of the must in the bin was 12″. Inside dimension of macro bin = 44″ x 44″.

•  100.5 gallons must = 12in * 44in * 44in *0.00432900433  gallon/in^3
•  1029 lbs grapes = 100.5 gallons * 10.23 lbs/gallon ( based on last years must weight measurements)
• 332 mL 10% SO2 solution = 50ppm = 3.3.mL/gallon * 100.5 gallons

Here is the Vinquiry report on the syrah must.

This is the craziest fall ever…

I was away in MN for almost two weeks on family emergency. My Mom passed away after complications from falling. I will miss her terribly. She was 85, and has had a long great life. 2011 will go down as a tough year for our family.

Maybe it can be a good year for wine…

While I was gone, my partners in crime, Erwin and Shahrokh picked a half ton of the zin, and a half ton or so of the Alban syrah. They crushed it, sulphited it and it has been cold soaking.

I will be adding lots of notes, getting caught up with all the details.

After a brief trip to MN, I am back. I stirred the Rose. It looks good. Slowly bubbling.  Putting my ear to the carboy, it sounds  like a fine crackling sound as the bubbles pop.

I measured the sugars:

• Free run carboy: 10 brix. Tastes, smells good. Lots of citrus, fruit. Light pink color, although still opaque.
• Press run carboy: 9 brix. Tastes, smells good. Lots of citrus, fruit. The color difference is quite noticeable. Darker  pink color, although still opaque.

I checked again this morning. Everything is good. Starting to get a really nice aroma. Fruity, yeasty. Nothing bad out of either carboy.

I checked on the rose tonight. Both carboys have started fermenting. I stirred them both. One had good ferment aromas. This was the press juice, noticeably darker in color. The second carboy was the free run juice, lighter in color. It had a slightly reductive odor. I’ll check in tomorrow and see how they are doing.

I just checked on the rose. No bubbles, no aromas, and all the yeast solution at the bottom of the carboy. But the color is gorgeous.

Patience, patience!

Early to the winery this AM…

I racked the rose off of the settlings into two 6 gallon containers, with about 5 gallons of juice in each container. Racking off the settlings should give me a lighter, fruitier rose. This is supposed to be an easy drinking, light rose, to be consumed this coming summer.

I prepped the Epernay 2 yeast in a GoFerm solution. After pitching, the carboys were stored in the cellar, in which the ambient temperature is about 65 F. This should allow the ferment to finish slowly.

I went back tonight and checked on the rose. Looks nice and settled. I will rack it and start the ferment tomorrow.

I also added 20 ppm sulphites to the 2010 Pinot, to prep for bottling.

We decided to let the zin sit through the first storm of the season. It is a thin skinned grape, with tight compact clusters. If water gets into the cluster, and it cannot dry out, you get bunch rot. This year however there are a lot of berries that didn’t get fertilized (due to rain in the spring during flowering). The clusters are not as closed and tight. The grapes are not ready for a red zin (23 brix today…needs 25 brix), so we will wait. However, I wanted to start something, so we started a rose!

We picked, crushed and pressed enough to make 7 or 8 gallons of rose. Here is what we did:

• Picked (Shahrokh and myself) 60 gallons by volume of zin grapes. We started around 7AM, finished picking by 8 AM.
• Crushed them to 24 gallons must (now with Esteban’s help).
• Pressed that (after 30 minutes or so) to 11 gallons pressed juice.
• Let that settle overnight.
• Sugars:  22.8 brix
• pH: 3.2
• Sulphited to 40 ppm