Barreled the zin
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
I installed a space heater plus a thermostat to keep the cellar temperature at 65 F to finish the ferment and for the MLF.