Tomorrow Crush ‘07 begins in earnest for us. Seven tons of Zinfandel on 10/4, six tons of Petite Sirah on 10/5, two tons of Zin on 10/6 are coming in. An assorted seven tons of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petite Verdot destined for our 2007 ‘Singularity’ bottling will be coming in sometime the week of 10/8. Not much for bigger wineries, but it’s a lot for m2.

Right now I’ve got 1.5 tons of Petite Sirah from a vineyard near Calistoga fermenting away, along with a pain-in-the-tookus, half-ton of Merlot that I’m making for a custom-crush client.

The early-pick Zin is pressed, and the sluggish fermentation is still sluggish, but still working. The flavor, however, is tremendously wonderful and the color is a beautiful deep red; quite different than the purple-red I’m used to from Soucie’s fruit, but rich and strong anyway.

Our 2007 Clone Six harvest/crush is in doubt right now. Yields from Napa look to be 30% to 40% below whatever ‘normal’ is, and since we’re not under contract with this source of fruit, availability of our expected tonnage is a question yet to be answered.

Hmmm…. what else to report? Well, after we fill the orders for vino from our Connecticut distributor and The Wine Garage, along with the ‘Trio’ that’s going to Jamaica, we’re nearly SOLD OUT of our 2005 vintage. We’re not bottling the 2006 stuff until March of ‘08 so we’re holding back about 35 cases each of ‘Trio’, ‘Duality’ and our ‘Row 23′ Petite Sirah. We want to have something to sell during our massively huge upcoming special events - ‘Chinapainting’, who’s performing on October 21, “The First Sip” on November 10 and 11, and the “Wine and Chocolate Weekend” coming up in February.

Check out the details on that stuff on the events page.

More later.

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!

To answer the quextions posed to me, after 24 hours the Zin was at 30 B. I innoculated for fermentation with a Brix of 27.5. (for those who are math challenged, it’s possible to lower Brix with the addition of what’s known as ‘Lodi White’.) Kevin’s Zin is well known for jumps of 3 or 4, or more Brix post-crush, so this wasn’t unexpected. I also added enough tartaric acid to bring the pH down to 3.6 from 3.87. Fermentation started lagging at 4 B. I had it tested at the lab, alcohol was only 14%. Strange. So I reinnoculated with UV43 and will press tomorrow or Sunday.

Now to fun stuff. Pictures.

At Dolce Vino Wine Shop in Cameron Park at a m2 wine tasting event.
Add a big shout out to Ravel!

Here’s the 2007 Crush Crew! (aka, My Minions)
James, Mark, Jim, and Brian!

A Ferrari articulated tractor owned by Jim C. - a kinky little piece of vineyard equipment if there ever was such a thing!

Two tons of Syrah from Lani’s Vineyard in the shade awaiting the truck to the winery.

More later!

So it rained last night in Sacramento. It didn’t rain in Lodi. I dunno about Napa or the Foothills.

Kevin Soucie says a little bit of rain on the grapes at this time of year is no big deal - it’s when it becomes a quarter of an inch for two or three days in a row that you have problems. Hmmm…. I don’t know enough to say either way.

Ted and I pressed 1.25 tons of the Pratt Cab (Fair Play AVA) yesterday. I’m pressing a little sweeter this year so as to not have too much tannin extraction in the wines. I think our ‘06 Napa Clone Six Cab is too tannic; Chris disagrees. We left it on the skins two to three days after it fermented out and since seed tannins are soluble in alcohol, we got a lot of tannin. Ok, fine for Clone Six, maybe. But since the Pratt stuff is headed for the ‘07 Trio/Treo/Treos I don’t want too much tannin.

The first three tons of Soucie Zin are my problem child wine this year. 24 hours post-crush Brix was 30. Yikes. Fixed that issue, I think, yet the yeasty-beasties crapped out at around 14.7 alcohol with 3 Brix to go. I started up a fresh yeast today to re-invigorate the existing fermentation. We’ll see how this goes. I used some new yeasts (new to me) this year on this batch … Nt1112 and BM4×4 … two hybrid yeasts. I’m less than impressed so far with my choices. Color isn’t right, fermentation not as vigorous as I like. I think on the second and third picks of Soucie Zin that I’m reverting to my tried and true D254, D80 and BM45 yeasts.

More later….

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.

Five point five tons of Syrah from Lani’s Vineyard in Shenandoah Valley, Amador County, to be picked tomorrow morning - two day laborers are hired to help me get it crushed tomorrow afternoon at m2 winery in Lodi. Chris is working his day job, unable to get time off during the work week during harvest this year due to extenuating circumstances - diabetes and dying relatives among them. Not him with the D&D, but people with whom he’s associated, causing me untoward difficulties, selfish bastard that I am. Ted, one of our new partners, will be by around 2 p.m., hopefully bringing beer and water.

Dave Dart, of d’Art Vineyard and Winery, also in Lodi, is coming by for moral support. He’s picking 10 tons of Cabernet Sauvignon from his home vineyard Saturday. I’ll help out as best I can with his big harvest day by taunting his friends providing free labor as well as measuring sugars, pH, TA, weighing out SO2, tartaric, etc., as needed.

We’re also probably going to do 3.5 tons of Zinfandel from Kevin’s 1916 field on Saturday as well. Today I measured 27.8 Brix, 3.65 pH and .615 TA. Fantastic numbers from this old block of vines. Higher Brix than what Kevin reported from his tests on Sunday, but that’s the way it goes.

From what I’ve seen 2007 grapes are holding higher acids than whatever “normal” is. Berries are smaller than I’ve seen in a long time. Flavors are ok, but I like l o o o onnng g hang time and superior physiological maturity. Harvest is generally early this year, at least for our usual vineyard sources.

Overall it looks like 2007 will be one of the best, most - interesting - difficult - unusual - great - ordinary - insert_your_word_of_choice_here - vintages that California has EVER seen. Shortly you can expect to see famous, nationally know wine publications quoting famous, nationally know winemakers who will say “2007 is the best year since (insert great vintage year here.) It reminds me of the great harvest of (insert great vintage year here.) And of course, you’ll see strong recommendations to buy up all the 2007 wines NOW!!! Don’t wait!!! It’s the BEST EVER SINCE (INSERT GREAT VINTAGE YEAR HERE.)!!!!! Jeez. I hate wine cliches.

I’ve had a long day - taking picking bins up to Lani’s Vineyard, answering more than 30 phone calls, I kid you not, delivering a couple of cases of wine to customers, as well as trying to finish a presentation folder design job for Ann P., which is way overdue - the design work being my feeble attempt to make a little cash in lieu of a real job.

Enough of my bitching…. off to bed with me.

So my viognier barrel fermentation is proceeding quickly. The two barrels with the D254 yeast are nearly finished; -1 Brix today. The R4600 is moving slower and is at 3 Brix. Both are fermenting quicker than I would have liked. Ambient temperature in the winery is 63 F, but that’s really not cold enough to really have much effect on the temperature of the fermentation. The 3 stainless steel kegs are in the cooler at 50 F and still at 15 Brix.

A big shout-out at this time to Mark from Pixar Studios - I met him a few weeks ago and he came back in the winery today. I thought the guy looked familiar but faces and names are one of my worst things. Nice to see you again!

Re: grapes - 5 tons of Syrah from Lani’s Vineyard in Shenandoah Valley is coming on Wednesday. This is a great vineyard and 2007 marks the fourth year we’ve sourced our Syrah from here.

Our Soucie Zin, still on the vine, is around 24 Brix, according to Kevin, and he says about seven days to two weeks from harvest. We’re doing our usual two-pass harvest method with this block of fruit. We’ll also be letting a section of grapes hang for a considerable length of time this year. We’ve made a sweet Zinfandel before - our Zinlady - from Kevin’s fruit, but this year we’re doing it in true late harvest fashion - we’re shooting for 30-34 Brix.

Our two tons of Viognier pressed out to about 275 gallons of juice. I kicked off fermentation on Wednesday - two barrels got D352, two barrels and three 15.5 SS kegs got R4600. I’m fermenting the three SS kegs in a chest freezer re-fitted with a thermostat to keep the temp at 50 or so.

Numbers after pressing were 25.5 Brix, pH of 3.65 and TA of .705, or 7.05% depending on where you like your decimal place. Very very pretty taste to the juice. I’m looking forward to how this comes out.

Next week we’re expecting Lani’s Vineyard Syrah - not sure what day yet. Brix was 25 yesterday, I’m looking for 27 or so.

Two tons of Viognier arrived at the winery courtesy of Bill Bertram at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday. Vineyard source is Perry Creek Estate in Fair Play, El Dorado County.

Beautiful stuff, clean fruit, very little MOG but more dead leaf than I would have liked. As discussed earlier I did whole-cluster pressing which yielded about 150 gallons per ton of dee-li-shush juice. The Bucher Xpro 8 worked beautifully, the only downside is that we were able to press only 1000 lbs at a time. I expected it to hold at least 1500 lbs. I think that if we had destemmed the fruit it would have held that much.

Anyway, the press cycle for unstemmed, whole clusters takes two hours. Max pressure was 1.6 bar, pretty gentle. We were only able to do half the fruit Saturday and finished up pressing on Sunday. I did a light fining with Bentonite at .75 grams to the gallon and sulfited to 50 ppm. The juice will sit and settle until Wednesday; I’ll rack the clean juice into the barrels and innoculate for fermentation then.

I had talked with one of the local labor contractors and hired two guys to work on Saturday but they didn’t show up. On Sunday Nick, a guy who works for the landscape company next door to the winery came and worked with me all day, loading grapes, unloading pressed grapes and helping clean. I’ve got to watch out for my back. I have a minor herniated disc and if I over-do the physical labor I can really get into trouble. It’s way too early in the season to go down for a week with sciatica trouble.

Pictures coming soon. I left the camera somewhere …

Yowza, I realized it’s been July since I’ve written anything new here…

Grapes coming tomorrow, our first for 2007 - two tons of Viognier from the Fair Play AVA in El Dorado county. I’m going to do a barrel-fermentation and if all goes as planned we’ll have a great white wine for release in May of 2008.

 If you read this between now and Saturday afternoon, come on out to m2 and see what’s happening. We’ll be doing a whole-cluster press to get the juice off the skins as fast as possible, then a light bentonite fining. After settling I’ll rack clean juice into four neutral oak barrels and the balance into stainless steel kegs. The kegs will be cold fermented and the barrels will ferment at ambient temp in the winery, about 63 degrees. I’ll add dry ice pellets daily to keep the temp in the proper range if needed. We’ve never done a barrel-fermented white; we’ve done several small lots of whites in our past pre-bonded winery days - Sauv Blanc, Gewurztraminer, Riesling, so this is new.

Lots of other things have happened in the past month - Chris and I met some great folks at the Family Winemakers of California event in San Francisco August 19 & 20 - we’re exploring options on distributing m2 in Texas and Jamaica! Hey Mon! A big shout-out to Jamaica Paul and Texas Kasey, glad you enjoyed the wines and we look forward to future possibilities.

Also, Diana and Chris have done a kick-ass job at sales lately. You can now get m2 wines at Capitol Cellars in Roseville, CA. Marcus Graziano, the proprietor, loves our ’05s and carries our Petite Sirah, Trio, and Duality. He also has some of the very last bottles of the 2004 Dos Arkies in stock. You need to go check out the shop, it’s one of the best in California.

The 2005 Old Vine Zinfandel is essentially sold out. We’re holding back some cases for future library wine, but there’s no more for sale. We are offering futures on the ‘06 vintage, come taste it at the winery.

On the winemaking front, we retired a significant number of older barrels in July. I don’t like to use stuff more than six years old, so several 2000 and 2001 era barrels are now moving on to their next life as planters or decorations.

Our crush plans are now at 32 to 34 tons of fruit, scaled back from our original plans due to space constraints and budget issues. 30 or so new barrels are set for delivery in mid-September - Francois Feree, Demptos, Nadalie, Canton and Seguin-Moreau. Some of the 2006 wines will go into some of this new oak; we were a little short on new barrels last year and some of the ‘06 stuff could use a higher percentage of new oak in the mix, the ‘06 Zin especially and the Petite Sirah, both need more sweet oak notes. I bought 30 used 2005 barrels to use for our 2007 stuff from a top-notch, world-famouse Napa winery too.

Now for something completely different…. Check this out -

If you can’t read the sign on the passenger door it says ‘Allied Driving School’. I can imagine that phone call . . . “Mom! I failed driving school again. Oh, and the instructor is dead.”

I saw this car being towed to a repair shop, or junkyard, the other day driving home from the winery. It made my day.

Later doods!