Poppyseed Cellars

Why is nothing simple?

Here are the Vinquiry results for the ’08 and ’09 Syrahs:

2008 Riebli Valley Syrah Pre bottling Vinquiry Panel 1

The results are confusing.

1. First the ’09 free SO2 level was measured to be 47 ppm. We measured 27 ppm on3/12/2010. There is no way it could have gone up, as we have not added any more. So I don’t know what happened there.
2. The ’08 clocked in at 54 ppm free SO2. That also seems high. It last tested at 5 ppm on 1/20/2010, and I added 40 ppm more at the time. And it should have dropped from there.
3. Maybe Vinquiry was not well calibrated? I need to call them Monday and see if something is up. Also weird is that for the 2 wines that I had tested, they used different methods. It seems unlikely that both could be wrong. I don’t get it.

The rest of the data on the ’08 Syrah seems correct:

1. The alcohol is 13.4%; seems reasonable.
2. pH is 4.08; this is higher than the 3.9 that I measured, but not far off. It also makes sense with the low TA.
3. TA is 4.2 g/L. This is too low, and is why the wine seems a little soft. It is still good, but I think an acid addition will help. A bench trial is in order.
4. VA is .045%; this is nice and low. The aroma threshold is ~ .06%
5. Sugars at .037%; the wine is dry.
6. Malic is at 4 mg/100ml, or .004%. The MLF is done.
7. Free SO2 is 54 ppm. Discussed above. I don’t think I’ll measure it again; I have enough in there.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 8:57 pm and is filed under 2008 Riebli Valley Syrah, 2009 Bennett Valley Syrah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.