Poppyseed Cellars

Shahrokh is making a late harvest syrah, with  me as consulting winemaker!

• Grapes have been crushed; 18″ deep in macrobin = 151 gallons must.
• Hoping to get 70 gallons wine. My normal prediction is 91 gallons wine, but these are a little dessicated.
• Would like > 30 brix. 28 at crush time; let it soak up a few days.

Stopped in Sunday PM with Erwin. Sugars in the barrel at 0.0, so we are getting closer. Must temp was 68F, which is better. I put another blanket uon the barrel, totally enclosing the lamp underneath. I want to warm it up a little more.

I stopped by this morning. The barrel airlock was still going, a little slower than 1/second.

• Barrel: ~0.5 brix
• Glass: -2.0 brix.

The barrel has a way to go. I put a light under it and a blanket over it to move it along a little faster.

So we went out to rack the ’12 syrah off its gross lees.

We do have an H2S problem on the wine in the barrel. Now to figure out what to do. The ferment is almost complete. Should we copper first, or do MLF first?

Here is our painful history:

I stopped by to check on the  2012 syrah ferment.

• Free run (barrel): 1 brix; nose good; taste starting to get better. The bitter elements are gone. Can feel some tannins, but not too much.  Hopefully they stick around.
• Press run (tub): -1 brix; smell in tub not so good; maybe some h2s. Took a sample to glass, and the smell blew off, and seemed fine. Definitely more tannins in the press run.

Spoke with Erwin: current plan is to rack at least the press run on Wednesday morning when I get back from my trip.

We topped off and added 20 ppm sulphites to 2011 Syrah; 2011 Zin both barrels; 2010 Syrah.

We did a lot today. Started around 7AM, finished up at 12:0PM. Lomg day.

• Measured some of the ferments. From <1 to <3 in the various tubs.
• Emptied the new 2 year old barrel, rinsed it carefully, and  moved it to the cellar to let it drain.
• Racked the 2011 syrah from our 1 year old ReCoop barrel to a 2 year old barrel:
  •  The nose was fantastic. Some chocolate and cherries.
  • The mouth feel was a little light. We could use a little more structure, some tannins. Hopefully more time in the barrel will help.
  • We had extra wine since we were going from a ReCoop to a non ReCoop. We needed up with almost 2 cases of bottles which we will use to top.
  • We added 20 ppm sulphites.
• We cleaned and rinsed the 1 year old ReCoop that held the 2011 syrah, and set it up to take the 2012.
• We started by racking the press run into the barrel, but the pump clogged quickly. Still too much activity in the press run keeping the sediment in the juice. We cleaned and unclogged the pump (took 1/2 hour).
• We carefully racked the free run tubs into the barrel. We poured some of the wine that we didn’t rack back into the press run tub.
• Then we racked some of the press run from demijohn into barrel, and stopped a couple of inches from the top.
• Finally we poured the rest of the press run from the demijohn  and the press run from the 30 gallon tub into a single 20 gallon tub. We will let this continue to ferment until it settles, and then rack it.
• Put an airlock on the barrel; it started bubbling right away.
• Covered the press run tub with its lid and a blanket.
• Cleaned and sanitized everything!

We decided to press off sweet at around 5 brix. Trying to keep the tannins down a little, and we had a long cold soak.

We drained off the free run from the valve, and put it into the 20 and 30 gallon white tubs, straining out the seeds. Worked really well. Then pressed the rest in 2 press runs. We probably have 80 gallons of free run, and about 20 of press run.

We have:

• 5 20 gallon tubs, 3/4 full, of free run = 75 gallons
•  1 30 gallon tub, 1/2 full, of press run = 15 gallons
• 1 14 gallon demijon, 2/3 full of press run = 10 gallons

Because of the heat (predicted into the 80’s) we transferred all of the containers to the cellar to wait 2 days until Friday morning when we will rack off of gross lees to barrel.

Thursday’s activities:

• Clean bin with valve (Esteban did it before we got there)
• Test out valve for delestage
• Place second macro bin next to first, upside down.
• Place 4×4’s on upside down macro bin.
• Place valve bin on 4×4’s, with valve draining into right side up macro bin.
• Decided not to do any tartaric acid addition at this time. Last years TA went way up during ferment. Not sure why.
• Moved must to valve bin.
• Added water : 3 gallons to get to 14.3% alcohol, down from 14.9%.
• Mix yeast rehydration solutions:
  • Start with 2925 mL water at 110 F (had a hell of a time getting water to 110.)
  • Add 146 g GoFerm and mix.
  • Let temp drop to 104 F.
  • Add 117 g yeast. (whole 4 ox packet)
  • Mix, and let sit 15-30 minutes.
  • Mix over 5 minutes with equal amount of must.
  • Keep repeating previous step until yeast within 10F of must.
  • Add slurry to valve bin and mixed.
• Clean macro bin and replace.
• Clean up.
• Setup ladder for punch down.
• Show Esteban punch down log, tools, thermometer.

I took a sample in to Vinquiry for a core juice panel. Here are the results: 2012-10-09-006

• Sugars: 25.9 brix; this will end up around 14.8% alcohol at a .57 conversion rate. This is a high alc wine. We have to consider watering down. To get down to 14% would require about 5 gallons water.
• pH: 3.71: This is high. Much higher than my measurements of juice sample, ~3.4. I need to remeasure. It probably is due to potassium coming out in the cold soak.
• TA: 5.36 g/L: We would like to be at 6 g/L. We might have to add some tartaric.
• Total YANC: 190 mg/L (ppm): This is considered a medium YANC level.
• Malic acid: 3.25 g/L: This seems high. When converted to lactic acid during MLF, it will drop the TA by 1/3 of this value, I think.

So we have decided several things:

• We will use GoFerm for yeast rehydration.
• We will use full dose of FermaidK nutrients.

Questions to answer:

• Do we add water to bring down the sugars (and alcohol)?
• Do we add acid to bring up the TA?
• What yeast do we use?

Just for kicks, here is a core juice panel comparison for 2010,2011,2012:

Started up our fermenting log.

Added estimated dates for planning. Will replace with actual events as we go. Must be in barrel by 21st, as I am out of town for three days starting on the 21st!

We picked and crushed today!

We started at 7AM in the morning. Esteban had already cleaned the macro-bins, and was there when I arrived. Erwin showed up a few minutes later.

We prepared for the first hour. Here is a summary:

• Sanitized everything with StarSan.
• One macro-bin in winery to receive crushed fruit.
• Two 2×6 boards across macro-bin on which to place the crusher.
• Crusher sat on boards, with stem disposal into food tub next to macro-bin.
• Tarps on floor to keep it somewhat clean.
• Second macro-bin in back of Erwins truck to take to grapes.
• 4 totes and clippers for the pickers…Esteban, Erwin, Afsi, and Niels

We picked the Block 7 470 syrah first. We picked the outer 4 rows, filling the bin to about 3/4 full. The clusters were gorgeous, with almost no raisins. There was some what I think is wasp damage…hollowed out grapes, with just the skins left. Maybe it was birds.

Nice soft skins; lot’s of flavor. It went really fast as the clusters were big. It was amazing how much fruit had been previously dropped.

We then picked the Block 3 Alban syrah. End rows had some raisins, and we were careful to sort before putting into totes. We filled the bin so that it was mounding up maybe a foot. That should be about 1200 pounds.

Here are some stats post crush:

• 14 inch in-depth of must in bin. This calculates out to 117 gallons must, or 1197 lbs must (grapes), assuming 10.2 lbs/gallon for the must. That was what it was last year.
• We sulphited to 50 ppm;  384 mL 10% sulfite solution addition.
• We added dry ice pellets to must to cool it off and protect the must from O2.
• Must temp = 58 F…pretty warm.
• We put 6 gallon jugs of frozen water. Probably not going to help to much, but maybe a little.

Here are some photos from the crush:

block seven 470 clone

• 28 by hydrometer
• 26 by refractometer

Alban block 3 (did it twice as I was surprised by the numbers)

• 26 by hydrometer

Checked the samples again in the evening.
Alban: 22.5 brick; pH 3.13
470: 25.8 brick; pH 3.31

Plan on checking again in the morning.