Poppyseed Cellars

With many of my wife’s family in town,  I “hosted” a barrel tasting of what we have in the cellar.

The ’11 Syrah was very popular. It is now crisp and fruity, with slight tannins. There is no sign of the H2S issues that it had. It will be interesting to see how the tannins develop, compared to the ’10 syrah.

The ’10 syrah is a bit too tannic  for some, although we probably drank half a case over this past week. We have only bottled a quarter of it. Maybe I can try some blending some of it with the un-bottled ’08, which has nice fruit, but too little tannins and acid. The stuff we have already bottled will most likely age very nicely.

The zin was good once it had some air. It still has some H2S. It is possible that I will have to use copper on it. I really like it’s taste and mouth feel once it opens up. It is a deeply colored, bright zin. Not super ripe and sweet.

I stirred everything (I will try and stir twice a week) to help along the malolactic fermentation.

We also tasted the ’10 syrah from the barrel. It was much better  than from our bottles. I am not sure why; maybe there really is such a thing as bottle shock! We have only been bottled for less than two weeks. The aromatics are so much better out of the barrel.

We started at 6:30 AM…Erwin and I.

We racked the ’11 Syrah off of the copper into three white tubs, cleaned the barrel, and racked back, inoculating with a 2.5 g package of Enoferm Alpha on the way. That took until 9:30 AM. We ended up with 4 1/2 bottles for topping. We will need some of the ’10 for topping, as 4 1/2 won’t be enough.

The copper seems to have done the trick. No H2s on the nose that we could detect. We aerated the wine slightly when racking. It has less tannins than last year. Actually, maybe too few. It will pick up somewhat in barrel tough.

Then the fun part…FINALLY! We bottled the 13 gallon barrel of ’10 Moaveni Vineyard syrah:

• We first racked the wine into a 20 gallon tub.
• We added 10 ppm sulphites during the racking to get good mixing. This should put us near 30 ppm in the bottle.
• We soaked the corks in water as best we could. It really helps in putting the corks in.
• We then siphoned into the bottles.
• We got 5 1/2 cases. We left half a case for topping the rest of the ’10.
• It took us about 10 minutes per case to actually do the bottling.

The aromas in the cellar were amazing. Outside it was cold (near freezing) but sunny. Crisp fresh air. Stepping into the cellar, you would feel the warmer air, and then the  aromas would settle in. Just amazing. I think this wine may be the best we have made.

Finally, we sulphited the other two barrels to about 30 ppm as follows:

• 30 gallon: We added 20 ppm, or ~40 mL of 10% SO2 solution.
• 15 gallon: We added 10 ppm, or ~10 mL of 10% SO2 solution.

Here are the Vinquiry post fermentation panels.

I took the day off from my regular job…

I racked the  ’11 zin Rose into two 5 gallon carboys. Still a strong citrus taste. If this goes like the sauv blanc goes, that citrus will fade. It is still very cloudy. I measured the sugars after racking, and the Clinitest says 1% !  It seems high, but maybe. It should finish the ferment in the next month or so.

I racked the ’11 Zin from barrels into the white tubs, giving it some aeration. Then racked back, and inoculated with ML bacteria, 1 package of Enoferm Alpha. Zin smells and tastes good. Very much like zin; but it won’t be a “big” or sweet zin. It is going to be more crisp and fruity, like a syrah. At least I hope so. I forgot to measure the sugar.

Finally, we racked the ’11 Syrah into the same white tubs, with heavy splashing to try and get rid of the H2S. It wasn’t enough, so we did a copper fining trial with 0, 0.5, 1.0 ppm of copper sulphate. Just like last year, we decided to with the 1.0 ppm. 1.0 ppm = 1.5 mL 1% solution/gallon = 93 mL 1% copper sulphate solution into the barrel. We also put copper into our topping containers, a 1 gallon,  3/4 gallon jugs.

I started at 10AM, and we finished about 4:30 PM, no lunch. I am tired!

Here is the Vinquiry report

Our analysis:

• 30 gallon barrel: 13 ppm;  dropped 14 ppm  from 27 ppm 8 weeks ago, or about 1.8 ppm per week.
• 15 gallon barrel: 23 ppm; dropped 11 ppm from 34 ppm 8 weeks ago, or about 1.4 ppm per week
• 13 gallon barrel: 23 ppm; dropped 11 ppm from 34 ppm 8 weeks ago, or about 1.4 ppm per week

Decided we need some final tests on the SO2 on the 2010 Syrah before bottling. Shahrokh and I tasted it again, and once it again it was really good. The nose was clean and crisp and intoxicating; very much a syrah. I grabbed a sample from each barrel to drop off at Vinquiry. If we have to add sulphites, we can rack the barrels into a third container with the sulphites, and then directly bottle. We do not want to stir and have to let anything settle. We also topped off with half a bottle of the ’09 Syrah. The other half accompanied our pizza dinner that evening.

We also tasted the ’11 Zin: Slight whiff of H2S that blew off with a couple of swirls. When the sugar and MLF’s are complete, we’ll rack it with a little splashing. It also tastes great.  A little light on tannins, but that should pick up in the barrel.

The ’11 syrah needs to be aerated. It still has a solid H2S smell. As soon as the ferment is done, we’ll rack it and possibly use the copper on it.

I checked the sugars on all the ferments:

• Rose of zin:
• Free run: 0.4%;  taste of citrus, fruit, some bitterness; great fruity nose.
• Press run: 0.6%
• Zin (60 gallon barrel): 0.6 -1.0 %  (somewhere in between…); slight whiff of H2S dissipated with swirling; may need aeration racking to clean it up; some tannins, nice fruit, great color
• Syrah (60 gallon barrel): 0.2 – 0.4%; still strong H2S. It took a lot of aerating to get it good. Will need to copper.

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

• We racked into 14 gallon demijohns to transport the wine to the cellar, then pumped into:
•  62 gallon ReCoop French oak barrel (started out as a 59 gallon barrel).
• 15 gallon used French oak barrel (took almost all of the press wine, both medium and hard press)
• 3 gallon glass carboy
• 1 gallon glass jug
• 3/4 gallon glass jug
• Total of 81 3/4 gallons, so we lost about 10 gallons to gross lees.
• Very slight H2S. We may want to aerate at the first racking. Otherwise wine tastes and smells great. Very fruity, mild tannins at this point, although the press wine was more tannic than the free run. Out of the barrels, the free run wine tasted better