Three Tons of Defective Zinfandel

We pressed our first three tons of Soucie Old Vine Zinfandel Saturday. At press Brix was 2.5, pH was 3.67. Fermentation is still proceeding, albeit ve e e er r yy slow. Hence, the title of today’s blog entry. I told Kevin I wanted a refund. I used two different and new-to-me yeasts on this lot - Anchor NT1112 and Lalvin BM 4×4. I’m told both are hybrid crosses of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces bayanus. Turns out the still-unfinished vino has incredible flavor despite the sluggish fermentation. I knew these two yeasts would be slower fermenters than other yeasts I’ve used, and had high nutrition requirements. Soucie’s Zin has a very high natural YAN, so I figured I wouldn’t need much supplemental nitrogen. Still, I’m surprised at the lagging fermentation rate. I think the slowness now is due to low must/juice temperature. Still I wonder, yes I does.

Obviously, from my ramblings here, I don’t know what to make of the experience with these two yeasts.

We also pressed all of the Pratt Vineyard Cabernet this weekend. 2.5 tons of fruit yielded 420 gallons of new wine. After first racking we’ll end up with six barrels of wine.

We barreled down two-thirds of the pressed Lani’s Vineyard Syrah on Sunday - 12 barrels, with another six to go. Incredible color on this stuff. Brix is at -1.3 and my Clinitest tablet test shows less than .05% RS, the limit of the accuracy of the test. I’ve got to take a sample to the lab to be sure, but I’m fairly confident this stuff has completed alcohol fermentation.

Nothing much fermenting right now except for one ton of Cabernet Sauvignon from a vineyard on the Sonoma County side of Mount Veeder. I’m making this ton of fruit for a small custom-crush client.

Our other X-tons of Zinfandel is still in the field, not ready yet. Brix is adequate for harvest but the flavor development is not yet at it’s peak.

Check out the events we’ve got coming up - Taste of Lodi and Best of the Best are this coming weekend. We’re also doing our first ever Winemaker Dinner on October 20 and the musical duo known as Chinapainting, Jim Goodin and Daryl Shawn, will be playing at the winery on October 21. Jim is from New York, Daryl lives in Mexico. They play really cool acoustic music, and rehearse and perform via the Internet. They’re live at m2 on October 21.

Later!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Winemaking, Winery Events, Public Tasting Events, 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.