It's sometimes hard to believe how fast time passes as an adult. I remember as a kid how a month of school seemed like an eternity. Now I look at how little time it is especially when I think about all the things that I enjoy doing and trying to find the time to do them.
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| Slush (1-2 hrs) vs. Hard (24hr.) Freeze |
The winery is still quiet. Monday I added cream of tartar to the whites to help finish cold stabilizing them this week. The same as used in cooking and much cheaper so if you are ever in need hit up your favorite winemaker. I buy it in 50# bags versus the 1.5oz containers that the grocery store sells. That's over 530 little containers. The chilling system seems to be hanging on and getting the job done thought I think we still need to work on it a little. I checked the Gewürztraminer yesterday to see if it is cold stable and I think it is. Yeah! The slush freeze didn't throw anything and the hard freeze was just medium light. The cream of tartar is doing its job. Since the GT passed I'll check the Pinot gris and Riesling on Monday. If they both pass then it is time to start filtering. Filtering won't be quite the major operation it normally is because I have so much less wine and I sure won't need to create a filtering schedule charting out all my moves like last year.
Yesterday I went over to Roth's, a local grocery store chain, to show a few of my wines to the wine stewards for all the different stores and hopefully to drum some sales up in Oregon. The advantage of the tasting is not only to remind the stewards what the wines taste like but also to give them a few selling points for when they are talking with customers and for them to have a face, mine of course, to put with the wines. I like working with Roth's stores because I feel that they do a great job supporting local businesses; wineries and farms alike. They are also good about labeling local produce and meats and stating where all their seafood is coming from, something that is of up particular importance to me.
I think our new website is getting close. There have been some technical problems which is why our website was just a black and white page for a day or two but that seems to have been straightened out. So in the next few weeks we should be making the switch. When we do I'll post a link here. Would it help if I put a link on the Airlie Winery facebook page too? Leave a comment and let me know what is the easiest way for you to continue to follow what I am doing.
I was able to filter the Pinot gris this week and it worked out very well. You can see how nicely the cake formed on the screen. The screens are not filled to capacity, when they are there are solid cakes of DE between each two screens rather than the semi separate cakes that you can see in this picture. The other tank is the mixing tank or dosing tank. A supersaturated solution of DE and wine is mixed in that tank and then slowly dosed into the main body of wine on its way to the screen. That is what I am watching in the lower sight glass, there is also a stainless steel flapper in the sight window which gives me an idea of how fast the wine is being filtered and a guess at the pressure as the pressure gauge no longer works. So the Pinot gris and Gewürztraminer are filtered and sitting quietly and I moved the Riesling to the small tank that I showed you last week and have the chilling turned on there. I hope that next week I'll be able to filter it.
Last week I didn't show you pictures but I did also check the free SO2 on the whites. I do this using the Ripper Method. It is faster than the Aspiration method I use for the reds but is still based on a color change. I avoid using this method for reds because the end point is when the color is a medium to dark purple it is hard to see. One thing I always find interesting when running rippers is that I first add a 25% solution of sulfuric acid to the wines and the pH shift can cause a color change. Pinot gris and Gewürztraminer are the usual culprits but this year the color in the sparkling base gets more intense which is the pink wine on the right and the Pinot gris just shifts a little, the second from the right. I didn't get any change in the Gewürztraminer for a change. I titrate with iodine, you can see it starting to cause the color change in the close up shot, and when I reach the end point there is a formula to calculate how much free SO2 is in the wine. I have to admit that I have a cheat sheet so off the top of my head I can't remember the formula. 
Not much else to report, I am doing a tasting at the W. Salem Roth's tonight, Friday, February 18th, from 3-6pm if you care to drop by for a taste and a chat.
