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!

So, for some reason we’re planning on crushing 40 tons of grapes this fall. See the June 14 entry for how much must, wine, and finished cases that 40 tons will create.

After lots of back and forth we’ve decided on 38 new barrels from Francois Ferre, Canton Cooperage, Seguin Moreau, Demptos and Nadalie.

We’re figuring on ending up with around 100 barrels of new wine, with 38% of those barrels new it seems like almost too much new oak, but we’ll not be using it equally across all varietals. The Clone Six Cab will get almost 100% new Francois Ferre, Lani’s Vineyard Syrah and Pratt Cabernet will get about 25% new Demptos 50/50 hybrid barrels (50% French, 50% American). Different lots of Soucie Old Vine Zin and Maley Zin will get a highly secret combination of Canton, Demtptos and Seguin Moreau American oak. The Petite Sirah will see about 35% of new oak from Seguin Moreau and Canton. I will say that we like what Seguin Moreau U-Stave barrels do with the Petite Sirah.

Why this combo? As John Belushi said in ‘Animal House’, “Why not?”

Actually there’s a method to the madness and a strategy that picks up from previous vintages and carries us into future ones. It’s not just random whimsy as to what barrels we use for which wine.

Orders have been placed and delivery is set for mid-September for most of this stuff. I’m feeling pretty good about being ready for crush this year. We don’t have the stress of last year - we were pushing hard this time last year to get the new winery ready in time. I was dreading crush last year, this year I’m rarin’ to go!

I spent a couple hours Thursday and Friday topping barrels. As wine ages in the barrels it slowly evaporates through the staves and heads of the barrel. This is part of the normal aging process and is what makes new wine evolve from brash fruit and fresh alcohol into a ‘finished’ wine.

I had quite a bit more loss than expected this month - I can only assume that it’s because the outside temperature has reached the high 90s and low 100s and the air conditioner is running 12 hours or more a day. It’s not a detriment to the wine at all, as long as I keep up with our topping regime. We know from errors made by others that not topping religiously can ruin great wine very fast.

We’ve got a great racking system now. We store our topping wine in stainless steel kegs and have a elaborate piece of stainless stell tubing and check valves to pull wine from the keg. An inert gas (argon in our case) is hooked up to the gas inlet valve, a hose with a pistol grip valve is hooked to the wine outlet. Argon goes in, wine comes out. The keg can be left with a pressuried argon atmosphere for weeks without harming the wine in the partially full container. Very easy to top barrels.

To cut down on topping losses we would ideally refrigerate the winery rather than use air conditioning, but we can’t afford refrigeration! Refrigeration would have cost us about $40K for our space vs. the $10K the AC cost to install. AC dries the air, and increases the evaporation rate of the wine in the barrels. Life is full of little trade-offs.

I went to the ASEV convention in Reno last Wednesday, not for any of the seminars but for the trade show. I was on a barrel quest - looking for oak for the 2007 harvest - several of the cooperages had reps there with info on their barrels and some had wines that had been aged in specific barrels to taste and compare.

I’m thinking of acquiring a lot of Canton barrels - 36 month air-dried staves, Pennsylvania oak, medium plus toast. The differences between cooperages and the flavors their barrels impart to the wine is remarkable. This particular Canton barrel lengthens the finish on the wine and adds a spicy note, something I’m looking for to enhance our Zinfandel.

I also talked to Lallemand and Lalvin reps regarding yeasts and fermentation supplements - nutrients, enzymes, etc. There are some new hybrid yeasts on the market now, Lallemand BM 4×4 is one of these; a hybrid of BM45 and another ‘unnamed’ yeast. I’m going to try some of this yeast on our Zin as BM45 has always been a favorite of ours.

Lallemand says “BM 4×4 is a combination of yeast strains that have been specially seleetec for the positive synergies to optimize the sensory profile of wine and reliably regulate fermentation with a timeframe.” Huh? Sounds like marketing BS to me but the upshot of this is that the yeast purports to increase color stability, lowers astringency, decrease VA and enhance MLF.

These yeasts are not genetically engineered, they are naturally-occuring yeast crosses and/or lab-created yeast crosses. Again - NOT genetically engineered, they’re just messing with the sex life of yeast. I don’t know how the lab geeks help the yeaties get their freak on, but the tests and analysis show that the hybrids do work as advertised.

There’s also a new yeast from Anchor that’s rep’d by Scott Laboratories, another hybrid. Because we ferment in small lots we can keep different yeasts separate through the fermentation and aging process and my contacts at Scott are interested in seeing the results of our use of these yeasts.

More on this as the year progresses…….

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.

I’m finally almost finished with racking the ‘06 wines. At least this time.

I’ll probably rack everything at least twice more before bottling. Six barrels to go. It seems to be taking forever but that’s primarily due to our space limitations. Setting up equipment, getting to the barrels I want to rack, then cleaning up takes more time than it should. The actual transfer time to do six barrels - pump out, wash, pump in, takes about an hour, but phone calls, the odd visitor here and there (not odd visitors, just odd as in random) or spending time looking for something I need takes as much time as racking six barrels.

Cleaning up takes at least an hour and a half, depending on how much stuff I have to fork in and out of the building.

We bottled 88 cases of 2005 Zinlady today in about four hours. There’s the diff right there between a bottling service and hand bottling - we did 850 cases in less than four hours on April 17.

At the winery @ 7 a.m., not expecting anything to be ready to go. However Harry and Frank are standing around waiting on us toget started. Frank’s a little grumbly about us being “late”, but he’ll get over it.

Our hired crew shows up as scheduled at 7:30. Frank H. and the labels show up at 7:33 or so. We haul corks and capsules to the truck wrestle hoses and hook up pumps and the first case rolls off the truck at 8:08 a.m. We’re finished at 12:15. At one point we bottled 140 cases in 20 minutes. Amazing. Harry and Frank are fast and efficient and everything works. Why do I sound surprised? Go read the January through April portions of the 2006 blog. Last year’s bottling was hell on earth and I actually had been dreading this day, but damn, it went well.

We bottled all the ‘05 wines except for Zinlady, which we’ll do next weekend - labels aren’t ready yet.

We scheduled next year’s bottling for March 1, 2008.

Our thanks to Harry and Frank and Mobile Wine Line!