Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a a great Christmas or Hanukka or Winter Solstice or whatever it is you celebrate to liven the darkest days of the year.  Mine was very pleasant and I got a new cookbook and an immersion blender.  I'm looking forward to trying out both.

I've been in the winery a few times this week to check on the stubborn Pinot gris, which does finally appear to be moving. Yeah!  And to work on protein stability tests.  I ran a batch last week and found out what wines failed and then over the weekend ran the first set of tests to narrow down the dosage rates of bentonite for each wine that failed.  This week I trialed at finer rates and just finished filtering them.  I use a syringe filter because I am filtering so little wine, just about 20 mls of each.  The small white circle of paper on the brown paper towel is one of filter papers that fits in the syringe.  Then I put the vials, filled with filtered wine, in the handy rack that Barry built me which fits perfectly in my pot.  Now I am going to take them home, fill the pot with water and cook the vials of wine for 6 hours at 176F in my homemade water-bath and see what fails!  What fun!  The nitty gritty of winemakeing.

Happy New Year to you all and I hope it brings everything you are wishing for.  Cheers!  Elizabeth.

Let ML's begin

Yes folks, it's that time of year again.  I've started tracking MLs on the Pinot noir using paper chromotography.  I haven't inoculated the Chardonnay or the Rosé yet, still waiting for the fermentations to finish is all the barrels, but I did get on the Pinot noir.  As a refresher, ML stands for malo-lactic, and is the secondary fermentation that wine can go through.  Not all wines go through ML though generally wines aged in barrels do.  Wine in stainless steel tanks can also go through ML but it seems to be less common.  Instead of a yeast fermentation, like primary fermentation, which converts the sugar to alcohol, this is a bacteria which converts malic acid, like that found in green apples, to lactic acid, found in milk.  The change in the type of acid causes a pH shift which combined with the different acid makes the wine taste softer and rounder.  Which is why winemakers have wine go through in ML.  This year the wines seem to have very high levels of malic acid and I am expecting to see a larger pH shift than normal.  We'll see if that is true.  After checking to see if the barrels had started on their own, they hadn't, I decided to inoculate. 
The ML bacteria comes freeze-dried and I allow it the rehydrate in water for 15 minutes before adding it to barrel, you can see it sitting in the plastic container in the upper right corner of the picture below.  I also add nutrients specific for the bacteria to each barrel which is the powder sitting on the scale.   Healthy bacteria combined with the right nutrients and a warm enough barrel room will hopefully get the fermentation off to a strong start and I'll soon be able to see activity in the barrels.  I enjoy checking on the wines while they are going through ML because the wine seems to sparkle and swirl all on its own when the bacteria is going strong.  I'll inoculate the Chardonnay and Rosé as soon as they are finished with primary fermentation, it is rumored that you can have both going at the same time but I've not had much luck with that so I prefer make sure the primary fermentation is done before trying to start the secondary.

As for primary fermentations, my reinoculated Pinot gris seems to be going, not very quickly and I have to warm it just about every other day but it's moving, i.e. the sugar is dropping, and that makes me happy.  The rest of the whites in the winery are finished and I'm just waiting on this last tank of Pinot gris to start blending trials for Seven.  I also need to start checking the wines for protein stability and cold stability.  I can't wait to get started!

Cluster Pictures

Here are the promised cluster pictures showing the lifecycle of a Marechal Foch cluster on the right and a Chardonnay cluster on the left.  The scale does change on the photos, I'll have to think about how to do it differently if I do this again so that you can really see the size change but this time just keep an eye on the ribbon, it is 1/8th of an inch wide.

 June 21

June 28

July 6

July 13

July 21 - The shoulder was cut off the Foch cluster

July 28 - Foch cluster is now hanging opposite of previous weeks

August 3

 August 10

 August 17

August 26 - Chardonnay cluster now hanging opposite of previous weeks

 September 1

September 8 - Just a touch of color in the Foch cluster

 

September 15

September 22

September 29

October 6

October 13

The End! 

I hope you enjoyed the show, I certainly learned about grape development this summer having to go out every week really focus on two particular clusters.   Next week we'll be back in the winery.

It's cold.

It is really cold.  I just want to get that off my chest.  This morning it was 23F as I was driving in to work.  I did talk to a friend today who said it was 16F in Montana but that's Montana.  I don't live in Montana!  I live in the Willamette Valley of Oregon and if I want cold and snow I drive to it!  I don't want it coming to me.  I have to admit that it has been pretty though.  A few mornings ago I was making my coffee and enjoying the sun streaming in the window and saw glitter falling from the sky.  That is the best way I have to describe it.  I think it was either very fine snow or some sort of freezing fog and it looked like tiny pieces of glitter.  I tried to capture it on camera but the sparkle was too fine and the moment was so magical that I wasn't really trying that hard.  I just wanted to enjoy the beauty.   Okay I'm done discussing the cold . . . maybe.  By the way, just for comparison, September to December.

 

So what does a winemaker do when it's this cold, why turn into a mad scientist of course.  The warmth of the lab being a driving factor, that and I had to grow up yeast.  Yeast!  In December!  In the freezing cold!  (Oh yeah, no more cold complaints.)  Unfortunately I think the aforementioned cold aggravated a difficult fermentation and it was slowly grinding to a halt with too much sugar left in the wine.  So rather than put it off any longer I spent yesterday growing yeast and very carefully adding about a third of the sluggish wine to the yeast.  I let that sit overnight and when it seemed to be going well today I added it back to the remaining two-thirds.  Not quite the way I am supposed to do it but tank space is at a premium right now.  So fingers crossed the new yeast will get the job done and the wine will go dry in the next week or two.  And as soon as I get this sluggish ferment to finish I will start blending trials for the seven and then we can think about bottling.  Maybe it won't be so cold!

Otherwise things are quiet.  The chardonnay and rose in barrel are poking along nicely though I finally had to put a heater in the barrel room.  Yes, it's cold there too!  Even with the barrel room half underground.  They are getting close to the point where they might decide to stick if the yeast gets too cold.  (Kind of like me.)  I am excited about the rose and am going shopping to buy all the roses I can find to compare to what I have.  Let me know if there are any you particularly like.

Treat please!

Harvest 2011 overview

Hello All,

Sorry it has been so long but the last four five weeks have been busy.  (I actually started this post 10 days ago!)  Like all winemakers I love this time of year though I end the season tired, cranky and usually a little sore.  In all honesty I am having a hard time gathering my thoughts about what I want to share with you.  As an overview of the harvest the first fruit arrived on October 24th, Chardonnay from the Silverton area quickly followed by other white grapes from our own vineyard and from BeckenRidge.  This year to help balance the higher acid and to extract more flavor most of the white grapes got overnight skin contact.  This means we destemmed the grapes into tall plastic totes and allowed the grapes to soak overnight before transferring them to the press and continuing the process.  In a normal year the fruit is destemmed directly to the press and immediately pressed off, allowing little to no time for the broken skins to stay in contact with the juice.  This added extra time and handling to dealing with the fruit but I think it was worth it, making for better wine.

The last fruit came in on November 2nd, so a quick harvest as far as picking goes.  I was hoping we would still get in the Riesling from both our vineyard and BeckenRidge but no luck.  The cold temperatures at the start of November were both a help and a hindrance.  While on the positive side the Pinot noir was able to get a longer cold soak than normal and the Rose had plenty of time to develop color, the cold temperatures made it difficult to get fermentations to start in the whites and later in the pinot noirs.  It also was a factor in why we were unable to bring in the Riesling, it just stopped ripening in those low temperatures even with the green leaves.

After we finally got everything going it has been chugging along quite nicely and in the last week stopped the fermentations on the Muller Thurgau and the Viognier.  The first tank of Pinot gris went dry and I have my fingers crossed for the other two as well as the Gewurztraminer.  The Riesling we bought from southern Oregon is perking along nicely and I figure I'll be stopping that in the next week.  The Chardonnay and Pinot noir Rose is barrel have been going a little slower but they should be dry in the next two weeks and then I can start messing with the 7 blend.

As for the reds they fermented quite quickly after we got them warmed up and have been pressed off and racked to barrel.  I am quite happy with what we have there and am anxious to taste them after they go through malolactic fermentation (ML).  ML should also help with the acidity and bring some roundness to the mouthfeel.  I'll probably have to start warming the barrel room in order to help the ML to go through after I inoculate next week but I'll make that decision when I get there.

I hope you enjoy the pictures, they don't really tell a story I just tried to snap some whenever I had the chance.  If something really interested let me know and I'll explain further.  Next week I hope to post the life pictures of our two clusters.


I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and that you enjoy the up coming holidays.
Cheers, Elizabeth