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This year’s winemaking project is to buy a ½ ton of pinot noir and turn half of it into white pinot noir with the rest going to red wine. My grapes came from a renowned vineyard in Mendocino Ridge – the only non-contiguous AVA in America. The region is geographically bounded by the Pacific ocean to the west and Anderson Valley to the east, but only vineyards above 1200ft are considered part of Mendocino Ridge AVA. Hence the nickname of this region is the ‘islands in the sky’, as the vineyard-bearing slopes rise out of the fog below on late summer/early fall days such as today. It’s ridiculously beautiful up there.

Valenti_20240926 web.jpg

The vineyard manager called the pick for this morning, and I showed up a little after 9am when the picking crew were still out there bringing in my grapes (Pinot Noir 667 clone for those keeping score). Can’t get fresher than that! The thing in the middle of the grape rows in the picture above is the tractor bringing in my bin :). Fortunately it was a pleasantly cool morning after the hot days earlier this week. I loaded up my truck (with a very generously overloaded ½ ton bin) and headed home.
PN6VAL667 web.jpg

Back on the ‘crush pad’, Mrs Monkey and I set to work crushing and pressing out the white pinot juice. My crusher/destemmer is a bit aggressive for this task – ideally I’d like to keep the berries more intact, but it’s what I have and to be honest I won’t be too upset if my wine ends up having a slight blush to it. We went through 5 cycles of crush/press (plus the free run from a 6th press load) and ended up with about 27.5 gallons of juice. I added Lallzyme Cmax to aid juice clarification; it seems to be working well despite being 2 years old. I saved the pomace from 2 of the press runs and added it to my 2 red fermentation bins, to enrich the must with the goal of extracting a bit more color/tannin.

PNVAL667_crush web.jpg

After breaking for lunch we crushed the rest of the grapes – a breeze since we didn’t have to press this time! Since we had such a generous ½ ton bin I set up a third primary fermenter. We ended up with 2x 44gal Brutes (I’m guessing about 35 gal must in each one), and a 32 gal Brute that was about half full. If I’d known we’d have so much I would have saved another press load of pomace to add to it, but hindsight is 20/20…

Pomace_20240926 web.jpg

Both juice and red wine must had ~30ppm SO2 added – except for the ‘overflow’ bin, for which I plan to experiment with native yeast fermentation. I didn’t measure brix/temperature since I know it usually ‘soaks up’ overnight, but I will do this with my lab work tomorrow before pitching yeast.
 
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Those are awesome looking grapes! I think they will make great wine.

I always wanted to make a Pinot Noir from grapes but all we can get here is second hand fruit from Lodi and I know making a great Pinot is not possible with those grapes. I'm jealous, but I'll follow the thread with great interest... :)

Please post your testing results and keep us updated.
 
Please post your testing results and keep us updated.

Today was quite the learning experience (and a second frantically busy day in a row). Everything looked good this morning and here are the numbers:

White pinot (settled juice):
Brix 25.0
pH 3.35
TA 6.6g/L

That looked really good to me - perhaps could stand a touch more acid but I'm reluctant to mess with it at this stage. I did make a small acidulated water addition to bring the brix down to 24.0.

Red pinot (must):
Brix 25.5
pH 3.84
TA 5.4g/L

I finally figured out sample prep for red grape must. This sample was lightly blenderized and strained through a muslin cloth, then strained again through a fine tea strainer lined with the same muslin cloth. This was then clean enough to strain through a coffee filter and yielded quite clear juice for testing.

The pH was a surprise to me, I did not expect such a big shift from the clarified 'white' juice. I again added water to bring the brix down to 24.0, and included tartaric acid to bump up the TA and decrease pH. After stirring and settling, pH was 3.45, TA 6.6g/L. I'm happy with that as a starting point, though again I might add more acid later in the process.

After racking the white juice to 2x 15gal kegs I ended up with about 11 gal in each. Next time I must plan on greater settling loss.

Pitched yeast - BA11 and QA23 for the whites, RC212 for the red, plus I'm going to do a native ferment on my small (15 gal) red wine fermenter.
 
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Today was quite the learning experience (and a second frantically busy day in a row). Everything looked good this morning and here are the numbers:

White pinot (settled juice):
Brix 25.0
pH 3.35
TA 6.6g/L

That looked really good to me - perhaps could stand a touch more acid but I'm reluctant to mess with it at this stage. I did make a small acidulated water addition to bring the brix down to 24.0.

Red pinot (must):
Brix 25.5
pH 3.84
TA 5.4g/L

I finally figured out sample prep for red grape must. This sample was lightly blenderized and strained through a muslin cloth, then strained again through a fine tea strainer lined with the same muslin cloth. This was then clean enough to strain through a coffee filter and yielded quite clear juice for testing.

The pH was a surprise to me, I did not expect such a big shift from the clarified 'white' juice. I again added water to bring the brix down to 24.0, and included tartaric acid to bump up the TA and decrease pH. After stirring and settling, pH was 3.45, TA 6.6g/L. I'm happy with that as a starting point, though again I might add more acid later in the process.

After racking the white juice to 2x 15gal kegs I ended up with about 11 gal in each. Next time I must plan on greater settling loss.

Pitched yeast - BA11 and QA23 for the whites, RC212 for the red, plus I'm going to do a native ferment on my small (15 gal) red wine fermenter.
add vitamin B nutrient to your RC212
 
Awsome post. That fruit will be great. One of the best Pinots I have ever had came from Drew Family Wines who farm up there. High acid is best from a drinkers perspective on the white pinot (just me). Look forward to updates!
 
All looking good a few days after pitching yeast. The red pinot noir:

big_cap_web.jpg

Each primary fermenter contains about 10% pressed pinot noir 'cake' from my white pinot pressing (as in the press picture in my earlier post), so it's a lot thicker than normal... the cap is huge! My main fermenters (RC212) are rocking and rolling, went from 21 to 12 brix overnight... 😮 Second Fermaid-O additions went in this morning, one day after the first. The native ferment is still getting up to speed but so far so good.

24PN brixtemp.jpg

The white pinot is progressing slowly, and that's a good thing. I hooked up a homemade keg cooling system and so far it is keeping things relatively slow and cool, which is what I want in order to preserve the aromatics:
24WPN brixtemp.jpg

I used both QA23 and BA11 for my Blanc de Noir 2 years ago and very much liked the result, so I'm trying to do it again with still wine. BA11 is a bit of a nitrogen hog so I'm doubling up my normal (20g/hL) Fermaid-O dose to 40g/hL. First additions went in today.
 
Today was press day! As described on another thread, brix seemed to have stalled around 0.2 but I think this was due to flocculent solids in the sample tube giving a falsely high reading. After settling, I measured -1.3 brix for both my RC212 and native ferments:

Brixtemp 20241007.jpg
Free run was drained out of the fermenters using @vacuumpumpman's excellent free run tube; the press wine was collected from 5 cycles of my #30 (30L/7.9 gal) basket press. I ended up with 34 gal of FR and 19 gal press though I expect I'll lose some of that when I rack off the gross lees in 2 days time. I'd like to keep at least a gallon of both RC212 and native free run in glass, for comparison down the road.

Press_20241007 - web.jpg

The white wine ferments are marching along, also close to the end I think. I wish I could have kept them 5 degrees cooler, but it wasn't going to happen this year. I did add bentonite at 8.5 brix, which according to Scott Labs helps with both protein stabilization and preserving aromatics.

WPN Brixtemp 20241007.jpg
 
I did add bentonite at 8.5 brix, which according to Scott Labs helps with both protein stabilization and preserving aromatics.

I tried the (link)-FermoBent PORE-TEC from Scott Labs on four batches of white wines and I think the jury is still out for me on how effective it is. My main gripe with it is that once added, the bentonite particles stay suspended in wine for a very long time and clearing requires a C/K fining. Also two of the four wines, a Chardonnay and a Sauvignon Blanc, displayed flocculation when chilled. The other ones, a PG and Riesling, didn't flocculate in the fridge. I hope you'll have better luck with adding bentonite during fermentation...
 
The white wine ferments are marching along, also close to the end I think. I wish I could have kept them 5 degrees cooler, but it wasn't going to happen this year.

I had problems with temperature control this year, with one run-away fermentation reaching into low 90s for a whole day. My little TE cooler could not keep up with the heat produced by yeast and an ambient of around 80F.
I'm buying a proper glycol chiller for next year. This is what I'm thinking: https://morewinemaking.com/products/brewbuilt-icemaster-max-4.html
 
It's only about 4 weeks since I added ML bacteria (Oenos 2.0), but my barrel has now stopped 'crackling' so I ran ML chromatography (contrast adjusted a bit to emphasize the bands):

ML_20241108_adjusted_web.jpg

From left to right: standards, barrel (30gal), keg (15gal), carboy (3gal), 1gal FR (RC212), 1gal FR (native yeast), pre-inoculation sample (frozen)

My chromatograms always seem a bit smeared but I think that's just how they are. There are no discrete malic bands as far as I can tell so I think we are done, time to add SO2.

I also tasted - my first assessment since pressing. I think it's going to be great, with the possible exception of the 1-gal FR native. I saved a gallon each of the RC212 and native free run for comparison, and the native version still has an ethyl acetate/nail polish remover note to it and also maybe a little VA/acetic acid. It's not discernable in the other batches (some of which contain native fermented wine) so I'm hoping it will blend away. Ethyl acetate can supposedly enhance fruity character if only present at low levels.
 
It's been a month since I added SO2 to my red wine so I figured it was time to test for SO2, pH and TA. I sampled my barrel and 15-gal keg, assuming that the smaller glass vessels would be similar to the keg to a first approximation.

SO2 (modified Ripper method) measured at 14 and 15ppm for the two samples. As is my custom, I had added a generous (50ppm) 'loading dose' a month ago, so most of that seems to have been consumed.

pH and TA in my degassed barrel sample measured as 3.94 and 5.6g/L respectively 😮 The keg sample was similar.
That's a huge shift... I had previously adjusted the must to pH 3.45/TA 6.6g/L at start of fermentation.

pH >3.9 is really too high for microbial stability, and the TA could also use a bit of a bump so that the wine doesn't turn flabby. I set up 300mL samples with varying levels of tartaric acid added and will taste through them in a few days time to decide on what adjustments to make. Preliminary bench test of a 1g/L tartaric addition showed pH shift down to 3.70, which is encouraging. I'm guessing my final adjustment will be in the 1-1.5g/L range, assuming tasting shows that those levels are acceptable.

I adjusted SO2 back to 50ppm, though will probably settle on a lower target going forward once I've made acid additions to the wine.
 

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