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My dad always did 3 times a day from beginning to the end and pressed once the cap had totally fallen, or at least a puddle of clear wine was at the top. This year in the Willamette Valley was a good sunny and relatively dry one and the fruit came in looking pretty good. The juice was probably...

About a month ago my wife and I were attempting to move a large basket press out of our winery. The central threaded beam is taller than the doorway opening so the only way to do this is by very precariously tipping it back with one person bearing most of the weight and another steering it. It...

This year I have inherited a 4 acre vineyard of tightly spaced pinot noir, or perhaps I should say I have inherited 100% of the maintenance of it after years of it being split amongst 3 people. A lot of things came up that distracted me from vineyard work this year. While most vineyards with...

I inoculated my '17 pinot with malo on 7/12. The PH was already around 3.8 for the 14 barrels inoculated. Now they are all around 4.0 - 4.2. I read that acid additions should be done before fermentation, but there wasn't any description as to why. There is little to no free so2 right now because...

I use a small, cramped space as my winery. With spring in full swing, I am expecting malo to start soon. My concern is my ~200 gallons of sparkling base wine. Should I be concerned with the increased temperature from the MLF? I have an air conditioning system which I will use when it is time...

One of my '17 PN barrels has that unmistakable smell of bananas and its pretty blatant. I remembered vaguely that it was a bad sign so I looked it up. I do cold slow fermentations so that might be the culprit. I use 1 ton fermentation bins and use fish tank heaters to heat. Over the course of 3...

While topping yesterday I noticed a smell from one of the bungs that I had noticed the last time I topped. The wine inside smells fine when in a glass. The bung and bunghole, however, smell not quite like vinegar but still sort of sour, sort of yeasty like bread dough. A couple weeks ago when I...

So the story goes, my dad died and left me his winery. I've worked for him for most of my life and he passed on a lot of knowledge to me, but kept certain things to himself, including the technical details of making sparkling wine. I have a few hundred cases of bottled sparkling that needs to be...

Hello from the Chehalem mountains of the Willamette Valley. I own a small winery and 4 acres of Pinot Noir grapes. The clones are Dijon 113, 115, and UCD 29. Given our small production, (~300-1,000 cs/yr) and only having a couple people who harvest, we try to make as many types of wine as we can...