Crush!
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