Inspiration?

I've been waiting for inspiration to strike so I really have something to talk about.  To encourage that process I've been out taking pictures.  I still don't have anything I want to write about but I do have some great pictures so enjoy the show.

There have been several great walks in the vineyard.  I love watching all the new growth right now.  The young vines are starting to look like real plants and buds are popping out every where and getting ready to burst into bloom, well ahead of last year.  Let's hope we keep on this trend.

I caught three hatchings of garden spiders.  This one I actually had my camera near by to snap a few pictures.  The weather cooled off right after they hatched and it took about three days for them to all move off the loveseat.  Can you believe how many there are!? (Click on the picture for a larger image.)

It appears all of our grafts are taking.  I haven't found any with no growth.  I caught this one the other day, it's just over the moon, there are even two future pinot blanc clusters at the top of the shoot.  And in the right hand picture you can see the Marechal Foch trying to put out it's own leaves.  Those were promptly removed after snapping this picture.

Sebastian has been out spraying and mowing the vineyard while Rosario and Guadalupe have been suckering the vines, see below, and are about to start cleaning the heads.  You can also see some of the lingering frost damage where a second or third bud has not pushed out yet in the fourth picture.

We had our Memorial Weekend Celebration and released four new wines all sporting the new label design and two with wax dipped tops! I got to spend the day with the printers watching our new labels being run.  I love seeing a project come together as well as watch someone very good at his job turn out a beautiful product.

On the wine making side I attended a conference on pinot gris and have several new ideas floating around in my head for next year.  I also have been tasting through the barrels every two weeks and am happy with what I have, this picture was taken one of the times I took the wines home.  The wines smell different and my focus differs depending on where I am tasting.  I don't know yet if we will make a reserve wine this year but that's due to quantity not quality.  We only have 23 barrels of pinot noir and I think we will need that for the Willamette Valley Pinot noir but we shall see as the wine progresses.

On the home front I finished a stitching project that I plan to give to a friend after it comes back from the framers and my cats tried to build either a fort or a bunk bed I could quite decide but either way they were quite comfortable.  And while Ferb is pretending to look squished he sat there for a quite a while longer after I took the picture.  I think he was enjoying the warmth personally.

Not Entirely Unscathed.

Unfortunately we didn't make it through last week's frost entirely unscathed and while walking the vineyard I can certainly see where the fans and burn pile didn't quite reach.  It's interesting to note how more often than not it's the buds on the top of the cane which got burned while the underside ones are okay.

Ah well, though it puts me in mind of that well known quote "This was supposed to be 'The summer of George'! The summer of George."  Fingers crossed that the rest of our growing season is perfect and I'll still be happy come fall.  Though they are predicting low temperatures again tonight and Friday night.  Hopefully it will stay well above freezing.

On a more upbeat note I am off to Rose City Label tomorrow to be on the press run for our new labels.  Get your smart phones ready!

Look at this great shot from this morning.  The Foch is on the right, shoots are already 4-8" long and the empty trellises on the left are the new pinot blanc grafts and a few of them are starting to push buds.  We are going to have pinot blanc (imagine me wiggling in my seat).

Merry Christmas to me!

Look what I got today!  My first new pump!  For the winemaker geeks, it's a Waukesha 30 positive displacement pump.  I've never had a new pump before.  I'm so excited!  The funny part is that I have wine to move but I can't use it because the pump doesn't have a plug!  I'd have to raid another piece of equipment so I guess I'll just wait and use the old one.  Oh well!  But still, I am very excited.  It's so clean and shiny!  And it came it box, that officially makes it a present.

Okay, enough drooling from me, back to work.  Work this week involved adding the bentonite to wines that needed to be protein stabilized, a slow process but not difficult.  After mixing the clay with hot water I let the mixture sit overnight so the clay is completely absorbed and I have a creamy looking slurry that feels very slippery.  I then hook Argon gas up to the tank via one of the valves and slowly allow the gas to bubble in causing the wine to turn in the tank.  Finally I stand at the top of the tank and slowly dribble in the slurry.  This can take around half an hour depending on the size of the tank.  Finally I shut off the gas, close up the tank and let the bentonite go to work.  It takes about a week to settle out and as the bentonite passes through the wine the protein compounds will grab on to the clay and be carried to the bottom.  If I remember right there is a charge difference between the clay and the protein and that is what causes the attraction.  Please don't ask me which is negative and which is positive, I can't remember and I would be compelled to call a fellow winemaker and ask.

I also checked the ML's on the inoculated barrels from two weeks ago.  They appear to be starting. Yeah!  I saw sparkling in the barrels and we are starting to get the dots forming at the top of the sheet.  It's amazing what gets me excited is it?

I nearly forgot to tell you, the problem pinot gris has been stopped.  Mary and I decided it had come into balance though it wasn't quite dry and I went ahead and added the SO2, sulfur dioxide, to kill the yeast.  Watch now it won't stop just because I want it to and it will go to dry after all.  I can just see this happening.  The next step will be to check it for protein stability, add the bentonite if necessary, and start blending trials for both the pinot gris and the seven blend.  One of my favorite projects.

Pruning has started in the vineyard.  The crew at this time is just making the cuts, later when the vines are warmer they will go back and remove the dead wood and tie up the canes for this year.  If they tried to do it now the canes would tend to break as they are quite stiff from the cold and we would have nothing for this year.

I'm going to go pet my pump some more. 

Just kidding.

Or maybe not?

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!

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.

Wonderful weather and work in the winery.

I know it sounds like an excuse but I didn't write last week because the blogger site was down when I was ready but both of us are back now.  I don't actually have to much to report so enjoy the pictures.  Last week I racked the Gewürztraminer to stainless steel drums.  We decided that it wasn't ready to bottle on its own and maybe more time will help or maybe some of it will help the 2011 Seven blend.  Not sure what will happen but since at the moment it seems weak we decided to wait on it.  We did finish tweaking the Pinot gris and Riesling and will be bottling them next week.  I can't wait.  Tomorrow's program is to finish the lab work on the wines checking sugar, pH, and TA (titratable acidity).  Also I will recheck SO2 levels and CO2 levels though with bottling so late in the spring I don't think that will be a factor.  If there is too much CO2 in the wine then it foams up during bottling and makes bottling harder and creates under filled bottles so I like to be forewarned.

This week the guys started cleaning the barrels for me that are sitting empty for the year.  Guadalupe and Rosario have to move each barrel outside, empty out the old solution, rinse the barrel and then refill it with the new solution.  We don't fill the barrels full, that would be a wasteful amount of water but just put in four gallons mixed with SO2 and tartaric acid.  The SO2 is more effective in an acidic environment and the small amount of water keeps the chemicals in solution as well as helping to keep the barrels hydrated so they don't dry out and leak this fall when I will fill them wine because this summer is going to be one of the nicest on record!

I had to get out in the sun today, the start of that aforementioned summer, and so took a nice walk in the vineyard.  Some of the vines are starting to show their leaves, especially the young ones, and the chardonnay vines near the concrete driveway.  The reflected heat and light make a big difference.  Of course the dogs came with me, they had to break in their new summer cuts they received yesterday.  Besides, what self respecting farm dog wants to smell like floral shampoo?!

My brother came to visit this weekend and while we didn't get a lot of sun there wasn't any rain so we took the canoe out on the Willamette.  It's only about 2 or 3 feet longer than his 1972 BMW 2002 and besides he has a roof rack.  And, even better, he let me drive.  What fun!  He's planning to drive it from Seattle to Connecticut this summer and wanted to take it on a test spin so I lucked out by getting to see him.  For the curious, it's a cedar stripper canoe that our parents built about 15 years ago.

Happy New Year!

A bright and shiny new year for us all.  I already have my fingers crossed for a better vintage but I have 9 or 10 months until I know what this year is bringing.  Not being a New Year Resolution type person I don't have any resolutions to talk about but as always I do have the goal to eat healthy and get more exercise.  End of discussion.  And you can just see the pond is freezing.  Maybe we'll get a day of skating again!

In the winery last week I added bentonite to remove the protein from the Pinot gris and Gewurztraminer.  I am going to check today to see if I added enough.  The effectiveness of bentonite is temperature dependent so while I try to keep the samples at the same temperature as the wine what worked in the lab doesn't always work in the winery.  Hopefully it did as we are having a bit of a cold snap, 22F as I was driving in this morning, and I can use mother nature to help me cold stabilize the whites.   I need to chill them down to about 32F and keep them there for a week or two until all the tartaric acid precipitates out.  Depending on the amount of tartaric acid this can cause an acid shift in the wine which this year might be a good thing as I find the wines a little tart.  
Last week, I also added SO2 to the barrels on Pinot noir that are finished with ML.  After adding the SO2 I stir the barrels to mix in the SO2 otherwise it tends to settle to the bottom and then I top the barrels before putting in the new bung.  You can see in the pictures the two types of bung I use.  One allows the barrel to outgas, important during ML and the new one is a solid bung which reduces the amount of oxygen getting in.  I still have a few barrels of pinot which haven't finished ML and I am waiting for them to poke along to the finish.  ML bacteria of course doesn't like these cold temperature so what didn't finish last week may now sit for a little while until the barrel room gets a little warmer, the bacteria would rather be at 60-65F rather than the 45F the barrel room is now. 

 Pruning is starting in the vineyard this week, cold temperatures are helping that too and of course for us it only gets this cold generally when it is clear so the sun is glorious right now.  A trade off and one I consider well worth it, I'm sure warmer weather and wetter days are on their way.