The pinot ferment is well under way. The sugars still measured 23 Brix, so we have a long ways to go. But there was a nice cap to be punched down, and the must smells wonderful. Esteban will be punching down 3 times a day, and I hope to be out there daily for a fourth punch down. The color is really deepening. I wonder how light a wine this will be?
I went out to the vineyard to punch down the Pinot. The ferment has started. The temperature was around 70F, and the sugars measured about 23 Brix with the hydrometer. Everything smelled wonderful.
So far so good!
I brought the cold soaking Pinot up from the cellar yesterday, and it has been warming up fora day. The juice is a gorgeous purple color, with a wonderful flavor. There are some tannins, but at least so far it is a light juice. The fermentation should help.
I am using Assmanhausen yeast, a common yeast for Pinot. It is low H2S producing, medium nutrient requirement, and is supposed to produce spicy, fruit wine. Sounds good!
I mixed up a batch of yeast as follows:
Now just wait for the ferment to begin!
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:
With this low a pH, I don’t need much SO2. I added:
I moved the carboys into the cellar to sit over night. I’ll cast the yeast tomorrow, after racking off the sediment.
The sauvignon blanc is being picked tomorrow morning. I am going to piggyback on this harvest, so when I get there the grapes will picked and ready. I gotta drop the kids off at school; I wouldn’t have been able to start until 9AM. They are starting at 2AM. I don’t have the numbers…so I am trusting the winemaker who ordered the picking tomorrow. The guy makes damn good wine…I should be OK.
Also, I brought the pinot in from the cold room to warm up. I’ll start the ferment tomorrow!
Each day since I started the cold soak I have gone out to the vineyard where the juice is soaking,and replaced my milk jug of ice. I have set a stainless bowl on the top of the must, and I put the ice container into it, then put the lid on. I should probably put a blanket over the top also.
The 20 gallon tub is in a cellar at the house that stays in the 60’s throughout the summer. It is a lot easier to cold soak there than in my garage.
I would like to mix in dry ice, which is what the pros do. But this cellar is not vented. How much CO2 do you get from 1 pound dry ice? I got the numbers from a dry ice MSDS…
It only takes about 1% CO2 in the air to start making you drowsy. If I used 10 pounds, that would be 57 cu ft of CO2. The room is maybe 1400 cu ft. That is about 4% CO2. I don’t want to take any chances…so no dry ice.
The must is currently at 60 F, which is a little warm, but no ferment has started, so I think I am OK. I added three medium toast French oak staves to the juice. I am going to leave them in for the rest of the cold soak, and the entire ferment. I can’t really do a barrel ferment, but putting in oak staves is as close as I am going to come. Wine makers say that you get better oak “integration” if you do a barrel ferment, in addition to getting better color stability, and the removal of “green” or vegetal flavors. I have not made Pinot before; I have no control; so I am just winging it!
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.
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:
The Pinot winemaker is picking tomorrow! Yikes! My tomorrow is already busy…I’ll pick Sunday.
We did all right in the Sonoma County Harvest Fair Amateur Wine Contest. Here are the results.
My wines…
So I am pretty happy, though we really wanted a gold for the Syrah. Every wine without any defects gets at least a bronze. Something is usually wrong with the wine if it gets no award.
We did our vineyard walk through today. The three winemakers who are going to make the Syrah decided how they will divide up the harvest. There was lots of concern over not getting ripe enough. The Syrah is at about 15 brix sugar. It needs to be at least 22. That’s 7 to go, and it usually takes about 1 week per 1 Brix. So we are out 7 weeks, assuming good weather, which is shaky at this point.
They talked about foliar sprays that boost sugar; they decided not to. The wines these guys sell are >$50/bottle. They need the flavors to be right. If the sugars and resultant alcohol are a little low, but the flavor is right, thay are happy. No one knew what would happen to flavors using these foliar sprays.
They were unhappy with the few green berries that are left. The problem is that the green berries will turn purple, but will never ripen. And when the berries are on the sorting table (yes, these guys sort individual berries before crushing), you can’t find the unripe ones and into the wine they go. So they would rather have a crew go through the vineyard and remove the green berries while they can see them. That is a slow process, and will cost the grower some bucks.
We are looking at the end of October at this point for the Syrah. The Pinot however will probably be ready in 2 weeks.
This is going to be a very crazy crush season. The weather sucks! We are far colder this summer than most. So the grapes are not ripening fast enough. And we may have rain this weekend. As long as it is not too much, and it warms up and dries off, we’ll be OK. Otherwise there will be unfriendly organisms growing on the grapes.
I walked the vineyard Tuesday morning, measuring the sugars and picking out the rows I want. This Saturday, the real winemakers are walking the vineyard to divvy up the grapes. My quantities are mice nuts compared to what they are making, which is mice nuts to well known wineries.
Here is my 2010 Crush Plan. Since I am making 4 wines, planning the containers and equipment is more important. I have no idea how a real winery manages all this stuff. I am glad my living is not on the line!
A quote from a thread in Wine Berserkers: “Domaine Tempier gets all their color from 8 hr skin contact on about 20% of the grapes, the rest are pressed immediately”.
Tempier Rose is a great rose, made mostly from Mourvedre, I think. Mine will either be from Syrah or Zin. I have been wondering how long to let the grapes sit on the skins. Maybe I’ll try this.
I am entering 3 wines into the 2010 Sonoma County Harvest Fair…’09 Syrah, ’09 Sauvignon Blanc, ’08 Sauvignon Blanc, all under the Poppyseed Cellars label.
Also, Afsi is running for the Bennett Valley Union School District board this fall! 5 contenders, 3 positions available.
Crossing our fingers…
Updated the spreadsheet with all the ’09 Syrah expenses…about $9 per bottle. Some of the costs, like the demijohns and barrels will get amortized over future years. That brings it to about $7 per bottle.
The ’09 Syrah is bottled. We got 11 3/4 cases (~141 bottles). Here is the label:
We discovered that is is far easier to cork when the cork has been briefly soaked. We were getting damaged corks until we figured that out.
The aromas in the garage were amazing. We kept getting the fruit, but then cinnamon aromas. Had to be from the barrels. Hope they stay in the bottle! This is by far the best red I have made.
We have decided to bottle this Sunday. It tastes good; we need the barrels for the upccoming season; if we want to enter the ’09 Syrah into the Harvest Fair, it needs to be entered by this Friday!
So…we’re bottling!
I took a sample to Vinquiry for a final SO2 test…43 ppm free SO2. Higher than expected, but probably fine. So no more additions.
Planning for the upcoming crush…I am going to make four wines this year, all from the Moaveni Vineyard in Bennett Valley:
I am going to be busy. This is more than I have ever tried. The good news is I have sunk my entire allowance for toys for several years into a crusher/destemmer and a bladder press, so no more renting and driving around the equipment. I’ll have it when I need it.
I do need to plan out the glass and barrels that I’ll need. I’ll start putting together a table of the required items.
Topped of the ’09 syrah barrels. Used a 375 mL between the two. They would have taken a little more, but I am out of 375’s. We have a 1 gallon jug left for topping. I will re-bottle it into 375’s over the weekend. That should last through the summer.
Here is a history of SO2 measurements and additions for the ’09 syrah. I did it to help us troubleshoot the vastly different numbers between BevPeople and Vinquiry.
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.
The rest of the data on the ’08 Syrah seems correct:
Topped off this morning before work. The two barrels took slightly less than 375 ml together. I drank the rest!
I stopped by the farm today to top off the ’09 syrah.
Between the two barrels, it took ~500 mL of topping wine. I used the 375’s I had bottled, so I some left over for drinking…
I didn’t taste the barrels wine.
I took one of the 1 gallon jugs, and bottled it into 1/2 bottles for topping off the barrels. I also moved it out to the farm to be near the barrels. Now all the wine is together at the farm.
I finally bottled it. Tasted good, although the finish and after taste were a little off. Hopefully due to the coffee or the toothbrushing I did earlier.
Anyways, it is bottled. 4 1/2 cases. I didn’t try to hard to get the last drops out of the carboys. The wine was still on the bentonite; I didn’t want to fluff it up.
I moved it all out the the farm for storage, keeping 6 bottles for home use! 
Erwin and I moved the barrels to the farm, as the basement there is cooler. It was around 55 F when we were there.
I took sample of the ’09 SB and the 09 Syrah to BevPeople for SO2 testing:
The SB is ready for bottling! Maybe I can pull it off this weekend.
Just tasted the Syrah with Erwin. Very nice. It is definitely improving. It has a nice aromatic nose. Fruity with maybe a little spicyness. The tannins are slightly light in the mouth, but still noticeable.
Topped off the barrels this morning before work.
It took ~ 150 mL each barrel, so not much.
No more leaking around the bung hole. And the airlocks seem to have equalized. I topped off almost to the bottom rim of the hole. Both barrels took about 1/2 bottle, or 200 mL each of topping wine. This is mostly to put back in what I was taking out when trying to figure out why it was leaking.
I’ll put normal bungs back in in a week or so, when we are sure the wine is still.
Erwin and I picked up some new bungs and stoppers to see if we could stem the leak. When we looked at the barrels, we could see a little bubbling going on. The barrel was under positive pressure! Probably out gassing from the racking, or at least we hope that is it. The MLF is done, and the wine is dry, so anything else (other than out gassing) going on at this point is bad.
We put airlocks on around noon; this evening the barrel is still dry, so I think that was successful.
These barrels are a pain! Wine is leaking from the bung. It is as if it is wicking up between the barrel and the bung. I have removed probably three glasses of wine from each barrel, and it is still coming up. There is at least 1/2 inch between the top of the liquid and the bottom of the bung hole.
I am going to beverage people tomorrow and see if I can get some better bungs. The current ones seem long, and reach quite a ways into the barrel, and contact the wine.
Erwin saw the photos…thought there was too much wine leaking out the bung hole. I read a little of Jeff Cox’s From Wine to Vines book. He says the same. No wine should seep out when the bung is inserted.
So I took a little wine out of each. Tasted awesome. Resanitized the bungs, reinserted them, and wiped up with a sulphite solution. All’s well.
I decided to go with 0.5 g/L, or 23 grams total for 46 liters. I mixed the Bentonite and 1 cup of water in a blender, over the span of about 6 hours. It became a thick slurry. I then used a syringe to inject the slurry into the carboys while stirring. They clouded up immediately, although later in the day they were already clearing.
We racked into two used French Oak barrels. Here are the stats:
Label from 13 gallon:
Labels from 15 gallon: 
We have 2 1 gallon jugs, plus 2 bottles left over for topping off the barrels. Which needs to be done every 2 weeks! So I am going to use Google calendar to remind me…
Time to evaluate.
First, the clarity of the wine in the test jars, before pouring into a wine glass for tasting. I brought them into the kitchen under brifght lights, but it is easiest to see the clarity against the background of our light oak cabinets. It is harder to see it against a white background. One thing…there are some clumps floating still, although most of the bentonite has fallen to the bottom.
The nose seems to be the strongest on the cntrol, with the least nose on the 1.5 g/L. The 1.5 also seems to have the least fruit in it. There is grapefruit on the finish, and it really hangs in there for awhile. I taste no difference between the control and the 0.5 g/L. The nose on the 0.5 has a slightly more bready or savory character, which I actually like. Can we actually smell bentonite? Or maybe the savory is there, but covered up by something the bentonite is removing.
Based on this, I am going to go with the 0.5 g/L. Containers are 23L each, so that is 11.5 g/container, or 23 g total. Not enough time to do it this morning, but hopefully this weekend.
Here is what Erwin and I spent to make this wine…
Once we buy bottles, the last big expense, we’ll probably be at $9-$10 a bottle. Not too bad considering some of the expenses, like the demijohns and barrels will be amortized over many years.
So the SB has a slight haze. It needs to be fined. I am going to fine with Bentonite, whcich helps to remove protein hazes. I will so some bench trials, based on MoreWines discussion of Bentonite fining.
Tomorrow I’ll take a look and see how well it has settled. I could also leave it for a fewq days, while we go skiing.
This is the racking after the CuSO4 fining, about a week ago. We racked into 2 14 gallon demijohns, 2 1 gallon jugs, 2 750 mL bottles.
We tried the copper test again, as we stilled sensed some H2S on the nose. I think we are getting more discriminating. We decided pna another bench trial. We did 4 samples, 0.0, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5 ppm CuSO4. There was a clear difference between the control and the 0.5 ppm. We finally settled on 0.4 ppm as the final addition. As I will be out of town next weekend, we decide to do the additon Wednesday evening, and rack sometime when I get back.
I tested the SO2 at BevPeople: 5 ppm. This is not much. I need to bump it up. The pH as last measured was 3.7 I need to measure it again. If it is still 3.7, I need about 40 ppm free SO2. I will add 40 ppm, which is 2.6 mL/gal. But first I need to measure everything else:
I also realized that I still have a H2S problem. The smell of “oak” is NOT oak; it is H2S. Same at the ’09 syrah. I need to do a bench trial to see how much more CU to add. Each container already has 0.3 ppm.
Tested the 09 SB at BevPeople…LO sulphites…as in none…zip…zilch!
Bob said that titrets read about 25ppm high, and I have been measuring 25 ppm…
I need to add some sulphites. I am going to add 30 ppm. This is 2.0 mL/gal 10% sulphite solution.
0.5 ppm Cu requires an addition of 0.75 mL/gal 1% CuSO4 solution:
I will stir this in, and we rack in about 1 week.
Based on the comments we got from Bob at the BevPeople, we decided to try a copper fining bench trial. I followed the procedures in MoreWines copper fining paper.
Erwin and I could both clearly smell the difference between the control and the 0.5 ppm. I blind tasted the 0.5 ppm vs the control and had no problem figuring out the better one. Erwin blind tasted the 0.3 and 0.5 and was able to pick out the better one. I had a harder time between thos two.
Based on this, we chose to do the full 0.5 ppm addition to the rest of the wine. 0.5 ppm is the legal limit for residual copper in finished wine.
Erwin made the followiong measuremnt:
The Free SO2 level according to the measurement I made at the Beverage People on 1/8/10 was 27ppm.
Cold stabilization is complete. I will rack into 2 6 gallon (23 L) carboys, with some left over into clear bottles. The clear bottles will make it easier to see the clarity, and compare to some commercial wines. I think that there is a very slight haze, and I might need to fine the wine.
I have a sample to take to BevPeople, to do a SO2 test there. I want to correlate it with my titret test.
I seem to not have measured the final sugar levels, or at least if I did, I never entered it into these notes. So here are a complete set of measurements:
23 L carboy (6 gal):
25 L carboy (6 gal):
We want to add 25 ppm sulphites. That is 1.65 mL / gal 10% sulphite suloution:
I did the additions. I smelled and tasted the demijohns and 3 gallon carboy. Nose and taste were still the same. The nose has lots of oak to me. Taste was good. I could of just kept on drinking!
The nose on the other containers was the same as the big containers. Nothing is going bad or getting worse..
We have the beginnings of a mild cold spell. I will use it for cold stabilizing the ’09 SB. It is mostly cleared, although there still seems to be a very slight cloudiness. I will put it outside on ice for 2 weeks for cold stabilization, and hope that maybe it clears a little better.
Both carboys are now out, in the 20 gallon fermenting tubs, packed with ice. Two weeks will be the 6th of January.
I decided to rack the 1 gallon container, and an extra single bottle we had. Both had lots of sediment. First I racked the 1 gallon into a 3/4 gallon, and into a half bottle. Then I opened the extra bottle. PU! Rotten eggs… I could really smell it. So I went back and checked the 3/4 gallon and both demijohns. Everything smelled and tasted fine. So I tossed the extra bottle. Not worth keeping it! It had a lot of sediment.
Erwin has one bottle he is opening for Christmas. So now this is the tally:
We need to add 25 ppm SO2.
We also need to do our copper fining experiment. See if it helps; get it done if it does.
Here are the Vinquiry QC panel results.
Final measurements:
Bottled 14 3/4 bottles…done with the 2008 SB!
We did our racking this evening.
After finishing the racking, we have ~32 gallons. We didn’t lose very much, maybe a gallon or so.
The syrah is completely fininshed with the MLF, and has been for a few days. The plan is to rack and sulphite tomorrow with some aeration. Then taste in 2 or 3 days and see if we want to do any copper fining.
I checked this morning, and only one demijohn is still bubbling. The Right one, which is the one with the highest ML measurements. So I bet by tomorrow, it will have completely stopped.
I took 2 samples, one from each demijohn, Left and Right when looking at them from the table. We took them to BevPeople for ML testing:
We started at 2.5g/L, and .03 g/L is considered complete, so we are officially done. We decided to let it sit one more week or so to make sure, then we’ll rack and sulphite.
I also asked Bob at BevPeople to have a sniff and see what he thought. I was expecting him to comment on the amount of oak. He said it has some H2S! What? He even got out the copper sulphate, and put in a few drops and we compared a cup with and a cup without the CuSO4. Noticeable difference, indicating that there was indeed some H2S type problem. I want to try this myself at home. I really though this was an over oaked wine.
Maybe this aroma is due to the MLF itself? I have read that MLF’s can produce some off odors, and that racking will help eliminate it.
We should wait a week or so to make sure the MLF is done. Then rack it into new containers with tswome aeration and sulphite the wine. Let it sit a day or two, and resample it. See if some of this off odor is gone.
I stirred the pots this morning. Also tasted:
I decided to add the potassium bicarbonate to the last 2008 SB carboy, since the last one worked so well. This time I added 14 grams, instead of 11 grams. 14 is supposed to bring me down 2 g/L TA, based on teh Fermcalc calulator, which doesn’t quite agree with the BevPeople. We’ll see. I will put it out into the cold after we get back from our LA trip.
I stirred all the pots, and tasted and smelled everything. Nose is strong oak, nothing bad. Taste is still very good; noticeable oak. I am thinking that this oak needs to come out. I also topped off the containers with one of the bottles. The wine in the bottle was wonderful, fruit of fruit. I hope we don’t lose that in the oaked wine. For now, the oak is really strong. Some numbers:
I bottled the cold 3 gallon carboy!
HOORAY! Just one carboy to go…
I tasted the 2008 SB this morning, after stirring the syrah. It has lots of citrus, grapefruit. The sour acid taste has diminished; not gone. I think this will be a nice crisp SB for hot summer days. I am going to bottle this 3 gallon carboy tonight, and go ahead and deacidify the last 3 gallon carboy.
Busy morning. The MLF continues. Still a steady stream of bubbles.
Next stirring (Tuesday night), I’ll measure pH and TA and see how it is going.
I remeasured the acids in the carboy with the potassium bicarbonate:
So it definitely improved.