Pressing Issues

Crush is finally winding down, we’ve got all our grapes in except for a couple of tons of Soucie Vineyard Zinfandel that is destined for a late-harvest wine. If the weather holds.

Our Petite Verdot from Ledgewood Vineyards is ready to press as is a ton of Cabernet from Tamber Bay Vineyard, two tons of Merlot, and a one-ton lot of beautiful Syrah from Ledgewood. The problem of the week however, is that our Bucher XPro8 bladder press went belly up this past Saturday. Because it happened on Saturday we weren’t able to get a technician out to fix it until today. And since the repair took longer than expected I didn’t get anything pressed today.

The aforementioned Merlot is destined to be part of the ‘07 Singularity bottling, as is the Petite Verdot. Along with the Cabernet Sauvignon for the ‘07 Singularity from Frazier Family Vineyard in Combsville (Napa) we should end up with a very promising Bordeaux blend.

(Re: Combsville Cabernet - I’m fermenting it with a yeast produced by Laffort; a new yeast that’s not on the market yet. Called FX10, it was isolated at Chateau Latour in Bordeaux. So far, the wine fermented with FX10 is showing tremendous color - extremely dark purple - and a terrific nose. The aroma of the fermenting grapes smells like the color purple would smell like, if purple had a smell. It’s enticing stuff.)

Back to the press problem. . . . The problem started when the actuator motor that controls the air flow to the bladder seized, causing a short-circuit in the computer/control panel. Or the other way around - a burned circuit caused the motor to seize. Anyway, the press went into an endless decompression state and essentially quit. Fortunately it is still under warranty and the computer and the motor were both replaced by the KLR tech. I’ll tackle pressing the wines tomorrow.

While the press was being repaired I topped up most of the 2006 vintage wines in barrel. And did some sampling, of course. The ’06s are gonna be outstanding wines. We’re planning to bottle on March 1, 2008 and release the ’06s in May.

Other items: I’m on the hunt from about 10 more neutral oak barrels. We’ve got some new signs pointing the way to the winery being printed. I’ve got a new hose rack built, but not installed. I need a couple of new mini-stirbars for my SO2 auto-measuring-thingy - the only one I had got poured down the drain by one of my minions. I broke the handle on our best glass wine thief and also bumped about a dozen wine glasses for our tasting bar onto the floor. On the plus side . . . . hmmm. Well, the refrigerator works and is currently well stocked with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 6:16 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.