Press complete

The press is done.  I got just slightly over 5 gallons of wine out of 72lbs of grapes.  Now they just have to sit around covered in a nice warm blanket for 8 or 9 months and we're all set

Down to the wire

Well, we're in the final stretch.  The wine is at a 1.5 brix, and I'm thinking instead of letting it go to a negative measurement, I'll press at 0, so there is some residual sugar around for the ML to come.

Background picture

If anyone was interested, the blog's background image came from a picture I took last year (2009) of some Pinot Noir in our vineyard.

More than halfway done!

The must (juice + skin + MOG) started out at 22 brix, and is now down to 8!  That's about 2 brix a day, so we're looking at pressing on Friday or Saturday.  Making good progress, so let's hope that the fermentation doesn't stall.

Oh, for those wondering...

MOG == Material Other than Grapes -- Just use your imagination.  At every winery I volunteered, and in the classes I took, the idea of washing the grapes just never came up.  They're in tight clusters in 1/2 ton and 1 ton bins, so washing them will get little to nothing off of them (unless you power washed them, and then you'd destroy them) and all it would do is add water which dilutes the finished juice product, and nobody wants that.  I suppose with such a small crop I could hand wash them, but again, is it really worth the effort?

Ahh...that smell

There is just nothing like the smell of fermenting grapes.  It's got that awesome yeasty scent, almost like fresh bread, combined with the aroma of the grapes themselves.  I go out to do a punch down (push the mass of grape skins and seeds back down into the must -- juice + stuff -- so the skins stay in contact with the juice) just so I can get a whiff of the smells coming my fermenter (which is a 20 gallon white food grade plastic garbage can).  I've come to associate the smell of yeasty fermenting grapes as a sign of fall, which has always been my favorite season.

"Slow" -- Yeah, sure...

For the past two years, the great folks at the Beverage People -- without whom my wine might not exist -- kept telling me that I should consider getting some Epernay 2 to make sure that my wine gets fermenting soon enough.  Use it to supplement the "slow" Assmanshausen I use.  Now I might throw in some Epernay 2 next year, if I don't get enough fruit flavor up front from the German yeast, but "slow" is not how I'd describe how it's going.  I inoculated last night (Tuesday September 14th) around 7pm, and as of tonight, I have a nice cap showing, some decent CO2 production, and I'm down to 20 brix (from a starting point of 22).  Not bad for 24 hours.

Last year it took all of 7 days for me to get down to zero brix, so we'll see if I'm having a press party on Sunday or Monday!

2010 Harvest and Crush

Well, the cold summer finally yielded some grapes from the side of the house. This year's haul was 72 lbs., up from 55 lbs. last year.  The Pinot Meunier vines are starting to produce a few clusters, so I'm hopeful that next year they'll be able to contribute more significantly to the overall production and taste.  I don't think I'll ever have enough that I could crush and press just the Meunier separate from the Noir, so it will probably always be a field blend.  I don't know what cultivar the Meunier is, having obtained it as cuttings from the Kendall Jackson Center in Santa Rosa, but the Pinot Noir is UCD-23 aka Mariafeld.

I tried 100% dry farming this year, and learned that I won't be doing it again next year.  The grapes that were farthest from run-off water from my neighbor's backyard were extremely small and didn't really have a higher sugar content than the much fatter grapes from nearer the fence.  I think next year I'll try watering once a week, maybe a gallon or so, and see how that affects the grapes.  Dry farming did weird things to the leaves on some of the vines, too.

I foiled the birds this year by simply dropping netting over the entire side of the house.  I'll just leave it up and hopefully it lasts for a few years (luckily netting is pretty inexpensive).

The cool weather seems to have produced grapes with a much higher acid content, at least anecdotally (taste -- I don't have any equipment to measure the TA or pH).  It will be interesting to see how the wine comes out or what I have to do to it.

I broke down and purchased a crusher/stemmer.  It was the last major piece of equipment that is needed to produce wine (having purchased a #25 press last year).  I figure if I ever stop making wine from grapes I either grow or source, I can always sell the stuff I've purchased (the crusher and the press) for close to what I paid for them.

I decided to stick with the same yeast this year (Assmanshausen).  Here's an interesting link to descriptions of various yeast strains, if anyone is really interested. Strains of Wine Yeast

Here's to the start of the 2010 Julia's Pinot!

Pictures soon to follow