Fresh Grapes From Fine Vine Wines
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LOL! It's a tad crowded in that corner, but the room is still quite spacious with plenty of room to work and shop for a bottle to drink, so no barrel room in my future. I pretty much went all out with making wine for the firs few years, now those wines are getting some age on them, so my plan after '16 harvest was to slow down, which I have. The wines in the 4 six gallon Vadai's and the 12 gallon will be out and ready for bottling soon, have some more of last year's harvest to fill them, and will probably retire the Vadai's after that. Then I'll be down to just one large batch (30 gallons) per year.
Got one, the goal is not to have to move it around. With 30 gallons of wine plus the weight of the barrel, it's probably pushing 300#. I toyed with adding casters to the bottom of the barrel rack for the 30 when I built it, but decided I'd just roll it onto the cart if I ever really had to move it.
The bulk of the '17 wine is still sitting in the 30 gallon French barrel, haven't tasted it in a while, but it smells nice during topping up. One carboy of free run cab is in a 6 gallon vadai, one carboy of press cab is in a 6 gallon vadai, and the last remaining carboy, a 1/3 each blend of PS press, Merlot press, and cab press wine is awaiting a barrel to come free. Barrels are neutral, so there's some wine stix in there with the wine. It's looking like all of my barrels will be emptied by the end of the year, may keep wine in them long enough to fill them all with '18 wines, or might retire a few of them, haven't decided just yet.
When all of the '17's are back in glass, it'll be a pretty fun activity trying out individual wines and blends with all of the different wines, French barrel blend, vadai cab press, vadai cab free, and the vadai press blend. Won't be driving anywhere for a while after that.............
When all of the '17's are back in glass, it'll be a pretty fun activity trying out individual wines and blends with all of the different wines, French barrel blend, vadai cab press, vadai cab free, and the vadai press blend. Won't be driving anywhere for a while after that.............
Definitely so. Just don’t know if my palate has the ability to do the job well, but it’ll be fun trying....
stickman
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I don't know if I have the palate either. I think this is another area of wine making that needs serious patience. It seems like when you blend, the wine becomes temporarily disjointed, and requires some time to recover before serious tasting.
Makes you wonder when you see FB pics from top tier wineries and they have 30 blends sitting on a table ready to be taste tested. I know from personal experience that it takes time for blended wines to "marry" in the bottle. How they can tell which of the 30 samples is the "one blend to rule them all" I will never know.
Honestly, it’s the thing that intrigues me the most, and I’ve been trying to understand it. I believe it to be an innate talent that you either have or don’t. Like some folks can pick up a musical instrument and play, and the rest of us have to put in hours of practice to play basic notes. We know what we like when we taste it, but can we see through the things that will change and understand the final product? Can our palates detect the harmonious notes and play them effortlessly? As my first grape wines get a little age on them, I’m discovering that even the ones I was least impressed with are surprising me. Am I really that bad at understanding how they’ll develop, or will I just “get it” one day? Unlike the dude who can play any instrument, pretty much think that I’ll have to work hard to play the basic notes.
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I'm not sure I give the commercial guys so much props on this either. I went to a wine party, that a friend hosted. We did vertical tasting of 5 or 6 years of Pinot Noir from one of the well known winerys south of San Francisco. He and his wife are members of the wine club for this winery and get detailed notes about the blends they used. All were legally able to be called Pinot Noir > 75% Pinot, but when we read the blends. Every year was different, had different tastes and some really unusual blends, like 80% Pinot, 10% Cab Sauv, 5% Petite Syrah and then a few others that sounded like throw this in, since we can't use it anywhere else.
Mrs. Johnd off at a baby shower, seemed like a good day for some bench trials.
The bulk of this wine is still in the St. Martin, but there are three carboys that came out of neutral Vadai’s, this is the press wine from Cab, PS, and Merlot. Pulled out 1 liter in a measured container, plus a half bottle for filling, and whipped up a little batch of graduated tasters, starting from no added acid and going up to 2.5 g/L in .5 g/L increments.
Checked pH after the tasters were prepared, gradually decreased with each dose, 3.8, 3.72, 3.66, 3.58, 3.54, and 3.49. The “no acid added” tasted best to me, I’ll wait for the Mrs. to get home and see what she thinks.
Edit added a few hours later: home from the shower, the Mrs. tasted the array and wouldn’t you know it.... prefers the one with 1.5 g/L acid added, and a pH of 3.58. My head being a little pollen clogged at the moment, I’ll go with her taste on this one.
The bulk of this wine is still in the St. Martin, but there are three carboys that came out of neutral Vadai’s, this is the press wine from Cab, PS, and Merlot. Pulled out 1 liter in a measured container, plus a half bottle for filling, and whipped up a little batch of graduated tasters, starting from no added acid and going up to 2.5 g/L in .5 g/L increments.
Checked pH after the tasters were prepared, gradually decreased with each dose, 3.8, 3.72, 3.66, 3.58, 3.54, and 3.49. The “no acid added” tasted best to me, I’ll wait for the Mrs. to get home and see what she thinks.
Edit added a few hours later: home from the shower, the Mrs. tasted the array and wouldn’t you know it.... prefers the one with 1.5 g/L acid added, and a pH of 3.58. My head being a little pollen clogged at the moment, I’ll go with her taste on this one.
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All of the 2017 Vadai barrel wines have been bench tested, adjusted, settled, and bottled. All that remains is the 30 gallon barrel with press run wine, 66% cab, 16.5% each merlot and petite sirah. Hoping it’ll be ready to come out of the barrel this fall / winter, seems that the oak is progressing enough, and the wine is silky smooth. Little light considering the combo, but pretty nice.
This wine was removed from the barrel a few weeks ago, it’s resting in carboys now to settle down a bit before bottling. Today I’ll rack to fresh carboys in case there’s any sediment, adjusting the SO2 in the process, and tasting one last time before I “forever hold my peace”. Should be just N of 150 bottles, and I’ve got13 cases ready to be sanitized, so it’s off to the races!
Well folks, this one’s in the books, and I liked using my new AIO to do all the work.
Racked / cleaned all the carboys this morning, started with two sanitized carboys, racked into it, started the second while I cleaned the newly emptied one, kept that up til done, bout 35 minutes work.
Sanitized 13 cases of bottles in preparation for bottling. Started bottling at 11, finished at 1, not too shabby. Took me a few bottles to get the valve adjusted to the right speed and then just rolled through all 5 carboys. Had my son corking, keeping bottles in front of me, and moving the cane from carboy to carboy, we had a pretty good pace, 156 bottles in 120 minutes all in. Still gotta do capsules and labels, but there’s plenty time for that.
Racked / cleaned all the carboys this morning, started with two sanitized carboys, racked into it, started the second while I cleaned the newly emptied one, kept that up til done, bout 35 minutes work.
Sanitized 13 cases of bottles in preparation for bottling. Started bottling at 11, finished at 1, not too shabby. Took me a few bottles to get the valve adjusted to the right speed and then just rolled through all 5 carboys. Had my son corking, keeping bottles in front of me, and moving the cane from carboy to carboy, we had a pretty good pace, 156 bottles in 120 minutes all in. Still gotta do capsules and labels, but there’s plenty time for that.
Finishing up this thread. Capsuling and labeling day in the winery, just sorta taking it easy, doing a case at a time. Five down and 8 more to go. They’ll rest on their sides for a while, we’ll do some tasting as they sit, and hopefully get into the rotation sometime this year.
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