Doug, I am not sure what I am going to do. We are going on vacation from 10-20 to 11-17 so I have a timing problem that I believe is solvable. If I can get the wine on and into carboys by, say 10-15 latest, I should be okay. My concern is that if I don't get something going this Fall, I have to wait until Spring for the Chilean juices. Right now, I have about 120 gallons in carboys/demijohn. I would need to bottle or move some wine to my two 6 gallon barrels to free up carboys. I suppose I could buy more carboys (I have about 30 right now), but that would be a premanent solution to a temporary problem. So, with all this considered, my tentative plans are:
1. Blend my 15 gallons of Zinfandel in my demijohn with 5 gallons of Muscat that I have in a carboy and bottle the 20 gallons of blended wine.
2. Move 12 gallons of Super Tuscan that I have in two 6 gallon carboys into my barrels.
3. Bottle 10 gallons of Chardonnay-Semillon that I have in two 5 gallon carboys.
4. Move 15 gallons of Brunello that I have in three 5 gallon carboys into the demijohn.
All this will free up six 5 gallon and two 6 gallon carboys. My fermenting capacity is about 7 buckets (42 gallons) so I will have enough carboys counting the empty ones I have at present. My daughter can look in on the wine while we are away, so if I do move on this I will buy (all Mosto Bello):
3 buckets of Amarone
1 bucket of Valpolicella
2 buckets of Pinot Grigio
1 bucket of Nebbiolo
To answer your question, I have never made a Beaujolais but I used to wait eagerly for the Nouveau to come out each year. It was not a "blush" but it was very young.
