We have wine!

Well, the 2011 harvest has come to a close here at the Borin Family Vineyard.  This year's yield was a bit shy of two gallons, slightly less than I had predicted.

The wine ended up at -0.5 brix.  The first year I let it go to just past -1.0, and last year was also at -0.5, so I'm hoping I have a teeny, tiny bit of residual sugar.  It is also very interesting to me that this year, I got a significantly slower fermentation (Yr #1 and Yr #2 were both 7 - 8 days, and this year was 11).  I don't know what that could be attributed to.  I've been lucky all three years in that I haven't had to worry about stuck fermentation, or fermentation not starting.

I've also not had to worry too much about cold soaking to get more oomph out of the skins.  My cultivar (UCD 23 'Mariafeld') seems to like to give up whatever it can from its skins.

After the press, the family stayed for a pasta feed (while I was outside cleaning), and the 2011 vintage is now aging in its respective carboys in the garage.

in vino veritas!

Almost there...

1.5 brix.  I'm guessing we'll press on Thursday afternoon!  Press Party for anyone interested!  Don't get too excited...it can't take that long to press off approximately 2 gallons of grape must (it will take longer to clean the press before and after).  But in the end, we'll have wine!

Halfway done

Brix is at 10...we'll see how much it slows down

What a sad little harvest this year

One word:

pathetic

I was tempted to leave them on the vine to rot.  The amount of shatter was pretty significant, thanks to all the rain and cold we got in May and June (see Why Grape Shatter Happens at the Wine Virgin).  I ended up with only 24.6 lbs. of grapes, which will give me about 2 gallons of juice (if I'm lucky).  For reference, the first year I got 55 lbs. and 4 gallons of juice and last year I got 72 lbs and nearly 7 gallons of juice.

The brix was just lightly over 23.  I inoculated with Assmanshausen.

Here's hoping that at least I do a better job of fermenting and making what little wine I'll have this year, versus last year's vintage, which I'm not really super-happy with.  But this will be my third vintage, and I learn as I go every year.