Crush 2007 Preparations

It’s June 14 today … in three short months we’ll most likely be days, or hours, away from our first harvest and crush for the year.

So, I’m trying to get ahead of the game. The plan for ‘07 is 40 tons, plus or minus. That equates to about 90 barrels, 6700 gallons of must, 6000 gallons of wine at press time, and something around 2000-2200 cases of finished wine.

We are getting rid of a LOT of barrels this year. A barrel is, theoretically, good indefinitely as a storage container but contributes oak flavors to wine for only three years or so. Our oldest barrels date to 2000 and are completely ‘neutral’ in terms of impacting the flavors of the wine. Neutral barrels still contribute to the voodoo that is the complex interaction of wine and the outside atmosphere that happens during barrel aging however.

As I said, properly maintained, a barrel will theoretically last forever, but because certain bacteria love wine, even the best maintained barrels eventually build up a bacterial ‘load’ that you can’t effectively get rid of. So, our oldest barrels are going to Terry at Fair Oaks Nursery in Sacramento for planters. And I’m figuring out how many new barrels we want, and from which cooperage to acquire them.

I’m also making decisions on yeasts, nutrients, cellar chemicals, and other crush supplies that need to be ordered for fall. All in all, a lot of decisions. And decisions aren’t always my quickest thing to make happen.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Winemaking, Day To Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.