carboy aging

[Cynewulf]

View attachment 73907

This may be slightly off topic for this conversation but how does mechanical harvesting decrease oxidative risk? I would have guessed the opposite.

 

[Rice_Guy]

Not really off topic since oxidation is a cumulative effect, ,,, ie you can spend your redox potential early or later in the life of the beverage. The theory on mechanical harvesting
is that it is faster per acre of vines picked therefore one transitions to a low surface area per gallon of juice quickly. Hand pinking for a few hours into a tote squashes juice but doesn’t push all the air out.
Reductive wines do tricks as nitrogen flush the press and tanks, ,,, home can’t

This may be slightly off topic for this conversation but how does mechanical harvesting decrease oxidative risk? I would have guessed the opposite.

 

[Cynewulf]

Not really off topic since oxidation is a cumulative effect, ,,, ie you can spend your redox potential early or later in the life of the beverage. The theory on mechanical harvestingView attachment 73910
is that it is faster per acre of vines picked therefore one transitions to a low surface area per gallon of juice quickly. Hand pinking for a few hours into a tote squashes juice but doesn’t push all the air out.
Reductive wines do tricks as nitrogen flush the press and tanks, ,,, home can’t

That’s kind of what I suspected: the ability to get the grapes into the processing facility more quickly is thought to make up for any damage to the clusters from the harvester. Thanks again - helpful and informative as always.

 

[Steve Wargo]

I put my carboys in the ageing room. It's a large cooled room with 12 foot high ceilings. To close off the carboys when I start ageing the wine; that's after the wine is fully degassed in the carboy. I put a balloon in the neck of the carboy. Then fill the balloon with helium gas till the balloon is pressing real tight against the inside of the carboy neck. That blocks any outside air from getting into the carboy. I tie off the balloon real tight so as not to lose any of that helium gas in the balloon. This works really good. The only issue I have with this technique is figuring out how to get the carboys down from the ceiling when it's time to bottle. Gotta have fun making wine.