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.

I expected this crush season to be very short; back in early September it looked as if everything was ripening at once, due to an unusual temperature spike, and we would be overwhelmed with incoming fruit. Well, not so. After that brief heat spell the temp moderated and now things are being r e a l l y stretched out.

On October 11 I barreled down the Herzog Petite Sirah, 18 barrels. Last Saturday we pressed the remaining Soucie Zinfandel. Yesterday I pressed two tons of the Maley Zinfandel and crushed two tons of fruit from our Napa Valley Combsville Cabernet vineyard that is destined for the 07 Singularity bottling. This coming Saturday we’ve got more Petite Verdot coming in, and sometime in mid-November, if the weather holds, we’ll pick a couple of tons of Soucie Zin for our Zinlady late harvest wine.

I’ve got a new yeast for the Combsville Cab - a new, future, product from Lafford. The yeast was isolated from Chateau Latour in Bordeaux and only 10 kilograms were made available in the U.S. this year. I’ve got a 500 gram brick of it to use on the Cab, and I’m really looking forward to how this yeast turns out.

The First Sip weekend, an event sponsored by the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission, is coming up on November 10 and 11. All Lodi wineries are participating and we’ve got a lot of stuff planned. We’ll have a Master Cooper on site from Canton Cooperage demonstrating barrel building and Reds Regan will be creating a new painting inside the winery. Also, there’ll be music and some sort of foodie items too.

I’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then to get ready, mostly cleaning up and organizing the winery space. I know I’m ready for crush to wind down.

Yikes - winery update time…

We pressed seven tons of the Petite Sirah this past Saturday and Sunday; yield was somewhere around 1200 gallons of free-run and press wine. I’ll lose about 10 percent of that by the time it’s in the bottle due to racking losses, evaporation and so forth.

 Anyone want to come help do punch-downs and Ts and Bs??? You’re invited.

 Layne

The deep dark days of early October weigh heavy on my mind….

It’s not even time to “fall back” and get an extra hour of sleep due to the switch from daylight savings time to standard time.

Sixteen tons of fermenting grapes inside the winery laugh at me. ‘You think you can make us wine? Ha!” “We taunt you, winemaker boy!” “Our sugar will defeat you and our inherent bacterial load will beat you down and make you cringe in the face of our superiority!” “We laugh at you like an illegitimate red-haired stepchild!”

Ok. Time for bed. And less gin and tonic.

Ok, it’s busy now at m2. On Thursday, 10/4 we crushed six and a half tons of Soucie Zinfandel. Brix was 28.5 on 10/6, a ’soak-up’ of 2 Brix from what I measured at the crusher. Brix levels climbing higher after crushing is quite normal for most vineyards and grapes. If Soucie’s stuff didn’t do it, I’d be alarmed.

On 10/5 we did seven tons of Petite Sirah, a ton more than planned. Saturday we pressed 1.5 tons of Petite Sirah from Calistoga and innoculated the Zin and Petite for fermentation. Sunday was punchdowns and additions to the Zin and Petite. Today saw more punchdowns, more additions and crushing another two tons of Zin from Maley Vineyard in Lodi.

You’ll note from reading the blog entry of October 3 that the exact tonnage planned didn’t work out as planned. That’s the way it goes. Picking isn’t an exact science, exactly.

Other items of note: This lot of Soucie Zin is fermenting nicely, although the bins with the D80 yeast are HOT. Not danger-country hot, but too high for my liking, so I took steps to bring the temp down.

Color on the Zin and PS is incredible. Come to m2 and see for yourself.

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….

So, it’s slow today. Finally. Nothing but punch-downs.

My expected barrel shipment didn’t make it yesterday. The intent was to put together a consolidated load of barrels for several wineries, but one of the cooperages hadn’t delivered their barrels to the loading point by 6 a.m., and I’m told the driver guy got mad and left. We’re trying again for Monday.

Our Soucie Zin is fermenting nicely, as is the Pratt Cab. We’ll be pressing the Syrah tomorrow and the winery is semi-organized again.

I’m off to Lowe’s to look for some mounting brackets to hang stuff on the walls.