Let Bottling Begin

 

 
I have been spending the last month getting the whites and the rosé ready for bottling, which will start this week.  We have also been putting a lot of hours into our new labels including building the pages where the QR codes will be directed.  My understanding is that the page the QR code leads to is also under the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) regulation so until we have those written we can't submit the new labels for review.  We are almost done with those for the first labels we are having done so I hope to get the labels submitted soon for review.

I've also been disgorging more of the sparkling wine.  It's getting easier if not any faster.  Barry came by and help for a little while and that was good.  One bin down and 6 to go!  It really is at most a two person job but I'm planning on having a few disgorging days at the winery when anyone who is interested can come out and see the process and try disgorging a few bottles.  I'll post on Facebook when I set those days so if you are interested in getting notified make sure you are a fan of Airlie Winery. If you look closely at the bottle you can see the yeast beads frozen in the neck.  When the black crown seal is removed the pressure in the bottle pushes out the plug of ice and all the yeast which is caught by the upside down plastic box.  Remarkably effective.

Since I last wrote I've racked the rosé to tank and cold stabilized it as well as all the other whites.  Cold stabilization takes between two and four weeks even with the help of cream of tartar and I was glad we had as many cold nights as we did over the last month.  It helps keep our electricity bill down.  The next step after making sure the wines are cold stable is to start filtering.  I use a pressure leaf filter with Diatomaceous Earth (DE) to bring the wine from pretty well settled, it looks slightly cloudy, to brilliant, sparkling clear.  It isn't actually sterile at this point, the DE doesn't create that uniform of a filter medium but it is close and should go through the next two filters during bottling just fine.  After filtering everything I added a small amount of sugar to the rosé to round out the mouth-feel and reran all of my lab work.  During cold stabilization the wines throw tartaric acid which can cause a shift in pH as well as titrateble acidity. I also checked all sugars again.  It really is a fun test because of all the colors.  And speaking of colors while checking the total SO2 in the rosé the Sodium Hydroxide turned the wine green and then the Sulfuric Acid turned it pink again.  White wine just turns yellow and then back to white, still interesting but not quite as dramatic. And who thinks chemistry isn't fun?

I've also been attending the twice weekly meetings at OSU for the sensory panel.  That has been interesting though time consuming and I'm glad tomorrow is the last meeting.  For the last three sessions we have been evaluating Matt's research wines and I'm curious to hear about the wines and what he is hoping to find out.  He didn't tell us anything about the wines, to not bias us, so I don't know what characteristic differences he is hoping to find but the wines certainly are different.

On the home front Chad has been taking care of more dinners with my bi-weekly meetings and here is a picture of his beautiful Fragrant Fish soup, courtesy of Eating Well.  We also finally got the bathroom walls tiled this past weekend.  Now to grout them and put the sink and toilet in.  The pedestal for the sink is just sitting there because I wanted to see where the basin hit on the wall.  I'm really pleased with how it came out and can't wait for it to be done.

Trials and tribulations, well at least trials

I know, it's been another three weeks since I wrote but this time I've been busy, busy trialing in fact.  Trialing blends, trialing for cold stability and protein stability, trialing fining agents, trialing this, that and the other thing.  Actually things are going very well here and I've been making wine.  At least that's how I feel when I get to move it from tank to tank creating my blends and starting to think about filtering!  After some lab work of course to make sure it is ready to filter which leads to trialing when it's not.   I have all the usual suspects, pH, titratable acidity (TA), alcohol, residual sugar (RS), cold stability - don't want the wine throwing crystals if it lives in the fridge for a while, protein stability - don't want the protein coming out in strings if the wine gets a little too warm if someone forgets it in the car, of course none of you would do that, and this year I am checking for botrytis glucans.
If the fruit is affected with botrytis in the vineyard it can manifest in the wine as very long and strong glucan chains which among other problems can lead to filtering hell.  For the geeks, I think what happens is the botrytis feeds on the gluscose in the juice and produces the glucan chains as a by product but don't quote me on that.  Back to the winemaking side, what's even nastier is that it likes to sneak up on you, something like this.  I start filtering with the pressure leaf filter which uses diotomacious earth (DE), the wine basically pass straight through the medium and only a few of the chains get caught maybe slowing the filter down a little.  No big deal I think, user error, I'll be fine.  Then I get to the plate and frame filter, again the wine goes straight through the pads, a few chains might get caught but mostly it all looks good.  Then moments later it hits the membrane filter with its lovely accordion style interior, see picture of a cut open filter, and then little chains get caught and faster that you can say 'uhh, I think there might be a prob . . .' the filter crashes to halt, the bottling line goes down and I have a crew of 5 waiting for me to fix the situation.  So to avoid this situation I check the wines in potentially problem years and if necessary add an enzyme which will break the chains so they go through the filter.   Of course the chains are only broken temporarily so once I add the enzyme we have to bottle within a certain window of time before the chains reform.  And that is your chemistry lesson for the day.

Back to winemaking, last week we finally decided I had created the best pinot gris and seven blends in the lab and it was time to start implementing.   It took about three days and a fair bit of basic math to get the wine moved as all the 2011 Seven blend won't fit in a single tank this year so I have to do my best to create a proportional blend in two tanks and then during filtering I will mix them up creating a uniform wine.  I think the scariest part of blending for me every year is that there is no going back.  If I put something together wrong I can't take it apart.  That always makes me a little nervous and so I spend quite a bit of time laying out my plan of action before I start actually moving anything.  Everything went together without a hitch and now I am running lab work.  Once all the wines pass their tests I'll set up filtering.  Yeah!

We are still working on the rosé, haven't got that quite perfect yet.  After an intense tasting last week, as you can see we work very hard, we came up with some new things to try and we are tasting those this afternoon.  Hopefully I'm almost there.  I'm excited to get this wine in the bottle and out to you with the new label on it.  We are shooting for Memorial Weekend.

I also worked with the neck freezer a little more, my technique still needs some work I ended up wearing a little bit too much sparkling wine but I am hopeful.  Wish I had gotten a picture but you'll just have to wait until we start going into production mode.  Then there will be enough people around to get a few pictures of the process.

On the vineyard side, our Pinot blanc sticks have arrived, they are the pruned canes off a mature vine.  In April someone will be coming in to graft some of the Marechal Foch to Pinot blanc.  The advantage of grafting over replanting is you only lose one season of crop, the flip side is the parent plant will have an effect on the grafted plant but hopefully for us it will just help the Pinot blanc ripen a touch earlier.  After this is done we will have all seven varietals of our Seven blend planted here.

Just a home front update, bathroom floor is tiled, walls are next!  And spring appears to be on the way.

Memorial Weekend is here!

I had a good week I must admit.  We bottled on Wednesday and it went very well.  Maybe one of the best days ever.  I am sure it helped that it was a relatively light day as far as cases bottled but the fact that nothing went wrong was great.  For some reason that seems to be the rarity rather than the normal.  Due in part probably to the fact that we only bottle twice a year and what worked or didn't work for the previous vintage may not hold true for the current one but regardless this time things went well.  Neither filter plugged, we didn't break anything on the bottler, the glass was dust free and the corks went in cleanly.  I even had an intern helping out which meant I didn't have to be on the line the whole day.  Another plus for me.  And in case you were wondering we bottled Pinot gris and the Riesling.  As I mentioned before we decided to hold off on the Gewürztraminer and the sparkling wine will be a entire day by itself.  As far as when for the sparkling wine I am hoping to bottle it in the next two weeks.  Next week I am going to open the sample bottles and finger crossed they have fermented to dry, so I will be able to decide how much sugar to add for the ideal amount of bubbles/pressure in the finished wine.  Then I'll set up for that.  I think I will have to borrow a filler as the bottles will not fit on our machine but more on that when it happens.

As for the rest of the week I attended an interesting lecture in McMinnville on some new products and if any one has $32K laying around there is this beautiful piece of lab equipment that would make my life sooooo easy.  The salesman was trying to justify the price to us and how quickly it would pay for itself.  I tried not to laugh out loud.  I don't think anyone in the room thought they could justify the money in two years like he was trying to show.  But it was cool anyway and it would allow me to run some tests that I don't run or have to send out for but that's okay I probably could use a second press more.  We also got set up for the Memorial Day Weekend Festivities.  The winery and grounds are cleaned up and ready for your arrival.  We have some great bands coming in and hopefully the weather will cooperate.  The schedule is on our website www.airliewinery.com.   I should be out there Sunday afternoon so if you see me feel free to come up and tell me how much you enjoy my blog! ;-)  Otherwise have a great weekend and I'll write again next week.





PS I've been meaning to ask.  Does anyone have any experience pruning climbing roses?  This one has been in the ground just over a year and I'm not sure how much I should shape it or where the best place to prune it might be.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

Please Comment 'Yes' or 'No'

Our new website is about to go live and to be honest I am having a difficult time with the new editor.  It is not really designed for what I am trying to do here but I am going to work with it for a while.  One of the features I really don't like is how difficult it is to manipulate pictures.  Now for me a big part of what I enjoy about  posting is sharing pictures of what I am seeing around the winery.  So my question is this and I really would like a response, just yes or no is fine: Do you click on the pictures to expand them?  I realize no one would click on all of them but do you ever click on any of them.  The reason I ask is the new editor does not seem to allow the image to be expanded so I have to figure out how to do it.  I am sure there are work arounds (is that a word?) such as making a picture a link back to Picasa and when you click on it it will load the picture from there.  Part of the problem is that I don't know how to add links yet with the new editor, another thing that did not seem  intuitive the last time I tried working with the editor.  The last interesting thing I have run into is that I can't center a picture.  This seems very strange to me.  So the editor I am using is called Textpattern and any help, advice, links, etc would be much appreciated.  And if you know how to preview a page before it goes live please let me know.  Thanks.  And of course I need your response of yes or no so I know if all this hassle is even worth it.

So back to the winery.  I didn't write last week because I basically sat at my desk and wrote thank you cards to all the people who took the time to meet with me on my trip.  And if any of you are reading this, thank you one more time.  I did have an interesting time on Friday walking the vineyard with a soil specialist from Oregon Vineyard Supply.  He was pulling samples from various blocks around the vineyard and in about a week we should get an analysis of the soil samples.  Hopefully it will help us to better treat the various areas especially one section in the 'new' Foch where the vines are consistently thinner than the surrounding area and there is usually less fruit.  The sun was out for the first time this spring I think and so it was a great way to spend the day.  Our winery cat, Bob of the broken leg, was taken full advantage of it and the empty dog bed!  Just the right amount of sun please.

This week I have been catching up on lab work, checking SO2 levels and pHs, tasting through all the barrels and now I just have topping left.  I took the wines home this time in order to better evaluate them and am pretty happy.  I am surprised at how much variation there is in the different lots right now, disregarding the four barrels that still haven't finished ML.  I checked them this week too and on paper they still aren't done.  Three of the four actually taste very close but one is still quite tart.  I also tasted through the 2009 Reserve Pinot barrels.  Those are tasting lovely.  I am looking forward to putting them together in the fall and watching them develop.

The big new for this week and what we spent yesterday working on is getting eight pallets of wine, thats 448 cases or 5,376 bottles, ready to ship to Japan.  Yes, we are going international!  And it is all due to Barry's hard work.  I think this has been in the works for close to 2 years and then to have the catastrophe happen last month in Japan I thought that might put the whole thing on hold again but fortunately no and maybe the wine will raise a few peoples spirits.  The container going over will also contain wine from Belle Vallee, Viridian, Jigsaw and a winery from California (I'm not being a snob I don't know the name).  We agreed to be the staging area so yesterday was spent receiving all the Oregon wines and getting them ready to be shipped.  They each had to be repacked on a pallet which had been specially fumigated for export and then each case labeled with a sticker printed with the export company's name; From Oregon with Love.  How great is that!

Everything is to be loaded into a climate controlled container on Friday and then it is off the Seattle and then Japan.  Maybe one of will get a trip out of this, hint, hint.  Though even I have to admit that it is probably Barry who should go.

 More painting.  Chad decided he wanted a green office, I think it came out great.

Remember, please, comment yes or no.

Ferb is watching . . .

On the Road Again - almost

Our Reflecting Pool

I think I spent most of the week hunched over my computer trying to finalize travel plans and I know I spent one whole day on computer things which included arguing with someone in India that we aren't getting the download speed we are paying for and learning how to update our new website.  Their argument is that if we don't fail their speed test they can't help us regardless of what an external speed test reports.  Of course we don't fail their speed test.  Our website is getting closer to being ready for public consumption and if you would like to see it shoot me an e-mail and I'll send you a link.  Ryan is supposed to be making a few big changes and after those are done Mary and I would be glad for any feedback.

I also got caught up on my lab work, something I always get motivated to do when I am about to leave my wine for 2+ weeks.  Everything is in good shape though after tasting all the whites yesterday I think I will need to work on some de-acidification trials when I get home.  Cold stabilizing the wines certainly helped, the Riesling is beautiful but the Pinot gris and the sparkling base in particular are still a little sour.  Sometimes a touch of sugar works better than de-acidifying but we'll see when I get home.  I checked my four remaining barrels of pinot to see if ML is complete after I thought maybe it was after tasting last week but no.  I still think the barrels are moving but just not done.  Maybe when I get home.

On the weather front the snow is all gone but the rain sure did move in.  I think we have gotten close to 3" in the last three or four days and the pond is brimming again.  Barry snapped the snowy picture two weeks ago but it is so dramatic I thought you might enjoy it.  One advantage of the warmer weather is that the crew has been able to get back into the vineyard and finish up the 'twist and tie' on each plant.  As you can see our sturdy Chardonnay vine is all cleaned up and ready for spring.  Isn't the moss growing on the Foch a great color?  If I don't get a chance to write I'll talk to you all in two weeks when I get back to Oregon but I will try to write from Cincinnati next week and tell you about the Cincinnati International Wine Festival.  It looks like it should be a crush, we'll see.

White Wines and Lab Work part 1

Yesterday I started the lab work to see if the whites are ready to filter in preparation for bottling. The easy tests are for pH and titratable acidity. For the first I just calibrate the pH meter and then put the probe in the wine. TA’s are a little more work. I use both the pH meter probe and color to determine how much acid is in the wine. I do get to turn the wine a lovely pink color during the test and at least it looks like fun. Alcohols are also easy to check. I boil a small volume of wine and measure the temperature at which it boils. I look at chart and read off how much alcohol is in the wine.

Checking free SO2, which is the amount of sulfide available in the wine to protect it, is another quick and easy test, though again I have to trust my eyes. I am simply looking for color change. To the left you can see a finished sample, one in the midst of testing and the last about to be tested.

Checking residual sugar is probably the slowest test. It certainly has the most steps but does get to go through the most color changes which keeps me entertained. I won’t tell you all the details other than there are 6 chemicals, early on the solution gets boiled for one and half minutes and in the end I have to trust my eyes.