Sauvignon Blanc
I managed to get to the vineyard around 9AM. First I had to drop off the kids at school…then rescue the cat from the neighbors yard.
The grapes were picked and waiting for me. They started picking at 2AM.
I decided to go ahead and whole cluster press. I forgot to put the net bag in the press, but that didn’t seem to matter. I did two press runs. From about 40 gallons of grapes (150 – 200 lbs?) I got about 9 gallons of juice. That is a pretty low yield, but that was all my press could get out of the grapes. If I had crushed first, that would probably have helped. I pressed to 3 BARs of pressure.
Here are the post press numbers:
- Sugars: 23 with hydrometer
- Sugars: 22 with refractometer
- pH: 3.1
With this low a pH, I don’t need much SO2. I added:
- 20 ppm (3 gallons * 1.3 mL 10% SO2 /gallon = 3.9 mL 10% SO2)
- 20 ppm (6 gallons * 1.3 mL 10% SO2 / gallon = 7.8 mL 10% SO2)
I moved the carboys into the cellar to sit over night. I’ll cast the yeast tomorrow, after racking off the sediment.