Poppyseed Cellars

Erwin and I went out and racked the last of the wine off the gross lees. We had about 20 gallons of gross lees leftover from last Friday. We let it settle over the weekend, and we got about three gallons more wine. Good for topping.

We had inoculated everything with Enoferm Alpha last week. The cellar is cooling down, so we put a 100W light bulb under the barrels and 3 gallon carboy. We also put blankets over the top. We want to warm up the wine a little until the MLF is finished. Here are some pictures:

Here are the tasting notes from the Harvest Fair.

Because all three judges awarded a gold, we got double golds!

Here are the tasting notes ffrom the Harvest Fair.

We were the only gold given for zins. Tough judges!

HarvestFairtastingNotes2011Zin

Topped and sulphited the following wines:

• 2012 MV Syrah: +20 ppm sulphite
• 2012 MV Late harvest syrah, both barrels: +20 ppm sulphite
• 2012 MV Fortified syrah: +15 ppm
• 2011 MV Syrah: +20 ppm sulphite
• 2011 MV Zinfandel: +20 ppm sulphite

We racked off of the gross lees into a bunch of white food grade tubs. Put them in the mule, and drove them to the wine cellar.

We then pumped the wine into a 60 gallon and a 15 gallon barrel. We didn’t quite fill them all the way.

We also inoculated for MLF with Enoferm Alpha.

The gross lees still seemed to have a lot of wine in it, so we put that in the 30 gallon tub to sit for a few days. If it still smells good, we will get what we can on Monday or Tuesday.

Very happy to be in barrel!

Also tasted, topped and sulphited all of the other barrels.

Worked from  8AM to noon.

We started at 7AM.

The cap had risen, although there wasn’t much cap. We decided that it came up because of the long time from the last punch down, 24 hours. But it must be almost dry.

We finished by 11 AM or so.

We are going to leave it in the bin with the valve for 24 hours for the gross lees to settle.

This morning at 8 AM Esteban punched down the last cap.

By noon, when Erwin and I arrived, the grapes had sunk to the bottom! It was clear wine, and a few seeds floating on top. It actually tasted pretty good. And no signs of H2S.

Tomorrow we press into the bin with a valve. And Friday we move the wine to the barrels, and start the MLF. I am looking forward to the wine being settled in barrel.

I started a fermentation record to keep track of the temperature and sugar.

I will keep updating it here.

Ferment Record – Oct 13, 2013, 4-34 PM

The numbers are in and they are confusing: 2013-10-07-082

• The sugars at 24.8 are slightly higher than we measured, but not out of line.
• The pH skyrocketed from 3.4 measured by me to 3.82 from Vinquiry. I rechecked tonight myself and got 3.79, so it really went up.
• The TA is low, to match the high ph. We may need to add some tartaric.

Here is a picture after all of our processing, showing the must height in the bin:

We crushed Wednesday morning.

Attendees: Esteban, Erwin,Paul, Ryan, and myself.
We started at 7 AM, and finished completely by 11AM.

1350 lbs of grapes…80 gallons of finished wine in a couple of years!

Here are some photos:

Crush is tomorrow!

I have started a record sheet for the ongoing calculations that need to be done. I copied it from the 2012 MV Syrah sheet.