Busy Time O’ The Year

I’ve not kept up on the daily postings as I intended… Just not enough hours in the day it seems.

To recap Crush 2007 to date -

Two tons of Viognier fermented in barrel are near completion. I’ll be adding Lysozyme to prevent malolactic fermentation. The almost finished wine is pretty tasty right now.

We crushed 5.38 tons of Syrah from Lani’s Vineyard on 9/5/07 - nine bins total of must. Starting Brix was 27.5, currently it’s at 13.5. pH was 3.75, TA was .405. I added some tartaric acid, our usual dose of nutrients and the special m2 blend of different yeasties. I know for sure that YAN, or yeast-assimible nitrogen, is low in these grapes. I haven’t had YAN measured but still have a small sample in the fridge to take to the lab. Since it’s low, I’m taking great care to monitor fermentation speed, temperature, etc. The must got a pretty good whomp of nutrients, but still, stuck fermentation is a bad thing. If all goes well, as expected, we’ll most likely press next Saturday.

Three tons of Zinfandel and three tons of Cabernet are coming tomorrow. We’ll crush tomorrow afternoon and kick off fermentation on Wednesday.

I’ve been racking some of the ‘06 wines - so far six barrels of Zinfandel, four of Syrah, five of Cabernet. All tasting great. I’m REALLY looking forward to getting the ’06’s in the bottle next March.

38 new barrels to be delivered Thursday.

The biggest challenge so far this year is keeping the winery organized. Our small space (1800 sq. ft.) makes for continual moving in and out of barrels, bins, crusher, press, etc.

More later… lots of pictures to edit and post.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 7:11 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.