Pinot crushed…
My kids and I made it out to the vineyard by 8AM. I would like to have started at 6:30 AM, but getting the kids up and out would have been too much trouble. My in laws also came to help. My wife? She is in Paris drinking the real thing!
Picking the Pinot took about an hour. There was some turkey damage, and a lot of raisins from our big 105F heat spike a few weeks back. So, we skipped the completely raisin-ed clusters, and tried to remove as many other raisins as we could. We’ll see how it comes out.
We ended up somewhere betwenn 100 and 150 lbs, which is what I was estimating.
- Sugars were 23.5 Brix (hydrometer)
- The pH was 3.1
The pH is a little low, although it will probably rise. The sugar was surprisingly high. I measured a few grapes on Saturday, and got 21.5 with the refractometer. I should have checked the juice with the refractometer in addition to the hydrometer. I’ll check it Monday. I will also check the pH and TA on Monday and see where it is at.
I am going to do a 4 day cold soak. So I will get some dry ice pellets and mix some in, and put a few on top to create a CO2 layer to keep the O2 off.
I think I have around 12 gallons of must. I targeted 6 gallons of final wine. I added SO2 as follows:
- 50 ppm in 6 gallons = 20 mL 10% SO2 solution