GT is filtered!

While I must admit that this week didn't go quite as planned I am very happy that I at least filtered the Gewürztraminer.  I thought I would filter all three whites on Tuesday after the wines passed their cold stability tests but instead the Riesling and the Pinot gris both failed so those plans went out the window, or should I say roll-up door as I don't have a window.  Then while I was cleaning the filter and setting it up the wires that connect to one of the light bulbs in the sight-glass broke off and as they were already almost too short before they were definitely too short afterwards.  So Wednesday Barry brought me some more wire and today I rewired the light.  And it works!  Yeah!

So after that brief detour this morning I got the filter up and running and raced through the tiny amount of Gewürztraminer I have.  I decided to filter the GT because I want to put the Pinot gris in the smaller tank and see if I can get it to finish cold stabilizing.  Normally I would have waited to do all the wines in a row so I only have to clean the filter once and I loose less wine.  Since I wasn't able to filter everything after filtering the GT I moved the PG to the smaller tank and restarted the chilling.  Hopefully it will cold stabilize in the next few days.  I  did remember to take a picture of the filter after I was done but unfortunately the cake was already sliding down the screens when I opened the top.  In a normal run I use a lot more DE and so there is a layer 3/4" - 1" thick completely covering the screen that I have to rinse off.  This time as soon as I shut the filter off the DE started sliding off the screen by itself.  I do collect the DE, rather than letting it go down the drain, and dump it out in the ivy.  It is a great slug killer and also it doesn't then clog up our septic system.  And don't worry that is not wine sitting in the filter but water which I use to push out the last of the wine.  So hopefully next week I'll be able to filter the two other wines but I'm not holding my breath.

Yesterday was our annual pinot tasting at Montinore.  A smaller group than some years which was nice as we had more time to discuss each wine and energy to focus right to the end which was nice as I happened to have the last wine of the day.  Luck of the draw!   We tasted 2010 pinot that is currently in barrel and may or may not be done with ML.  A difficult time to taste wine as it can be very disjointed but at the same time finding faults or possible problems now gives the winemaker time to start addressing them and generally the earlier the better.  The discussions are always interesting and I was glad to get some feedback on my wine.

The last picture is of the GT before I started filtering.  Those are tartrate crystals floating on the surface.  Don't they make beautiful patterns, fractals in nature.