Syrah 2011 (resending to blog)

Today, we innoculated our 2011 Red Heaven Syrah.  We estimated 1134 #s fruit = 108 gal must in the 43" macrobin = 70 gallons juice.  The wild yeast was very active, so it appears we did not put enough Meta into the must on Saturday, the day after we received the container.  Angie had added 20 ppm and Ray and Mike added approx 20ppm more.  After confering with other pros, we decided to go ahead and add Red Pasteur yeast due to the high brix possibly being too high for the wild yeast to handle.  (4 Tablespoons) along with nutrient.   TA was .49, so we added 1 lb. of Tartaric Acid to bring the TA up to near 7.  The PH for Angies container with 27 brix was 3.78 so we assumed the same for ours.  We need to closely monitor the temp of the must and punch it down several times per day.  We have ice ready to keep the temps down. 

 

We need to get some supplies for the PH meter (base solution) and find our thief.  We used 8 pkgs yeast leaving us with 7.  I ordered 15 more from Brewcon, but have not heard back yet.  Mike

 

 

 

2010 Boisique Bottled

We bottled 52G of Boisique.  We tweaked the blend slightly from the tasting. Final blend ended up being:

 

50% WA Merlot

35% ID Merlot

15% Malbec

 

We tried blends using both barrels of Merlot and went with Troy's older American oak barrel. The WA Merlot that had been in Ray's new barrel had an off taste in the finish. We will use that merlot in our Bordeaux blend. 

 

Magnafique tasting trials are set for the evening of Wed Oct 5th. Starting blend for the 2010 Magnafique Bordeaux Blend will be as follows. We expect about 60G of Bordeaux blend, which is 300 bottles. Everyone needs 5 cases of clean shouldered bottles.

 

Magnafique Trial Blends

 

Blend 1

50% WA Merlot

40% WA Cab

10% Malbec

 

Blend 2

60% WA Merlot

35% WA Cab

5% Malbec

 

We want to bottle the Williamson cab as straight cab, unless we find we need it in the Bordeaux Blend. That is 75 shouldered bottles.

 

We discovered that we have 30G of WA Syrah to bottle, and not 30G of Idaho Syrah. That is 150 bottles of non-shouldered bottles.

 

We will bottle the leftover gallons of cab and malbec as our 2010 encore, which will be about 50/50 blend of WA Cab and Malbec (est 20-25G or 125 bottles).

 

 

Re: [Riverwoods Wineries] 2010 Boisique

Sorry--this sent before I was done.  Additional edits below.

 

Troy

The group met last night to decide our Boisique blend.  As always, it was an interesting blending event.  We ended up liking a blend of 85% Merlot and 15% Malbec the best, with the Merlot being a 50/50 blend of the ID Merlot and WA Merlot.

 

The ID Merlot added some surprising flavors of candied raspberries which was too strong by itself, but was a nice addition when blended in with the WA Merlot.  Ray thought the flavor could be dialed down a little bit more (ie: more WA Merlot than ID), and we tried reducing it by 50%, which was too much.

 

Looking at the gallons of merlot in the cellar, we have an 18G of ID merlot, plus 1+G in carboys and topping. So we have an easy option to try a slightly higher blend of WA Merlot (we would need to taste this first, the blend ratio is below), or we can hold the additional 11G of WA Merlot in Carboys for future blending. 

 

Given the good results of blending the ID + WA Merlot together for the Boisique we should probably do some quick blends of the ID and WA Syrah to see if we like that.  Blending multiple sources can often add complexity to the wine. We could consider doing 1 30G barrel of 100% WA Syrah and the second blended with ID and WA Syrah.  Something worth considering.

 

We are starting bottling the week of the 18th. Washing bottles mid-day on Monday the 19th and bottling the WA Syrah Wednesday evening Sept 21st. Repeating the following Mon and Wed for the Boisique.  We need 25 cases of non-shouldered bottles for the Syrah and 25 shouldered bottles for the Boisique.

 

We still have trial blending to do for a Bordeaux/Magnafique blend and an Encore.

 

Here is the blend with 50/50 ID/WA Merlot (3.75 cases each).

 

45G of Boisique

19G of ID Merlot   42.5%

19G of WA Merlot  42.5

6.75G of Malbec   15%

 

Here is the blend, using the full barrel of WA Merlot, (4.8 cases each).

 

57.5G of Boisique

19G of ID Merlot (33%)

30G of WA Merlot (52%)

8.5G of Malbec (15%)

 

2010 Boisique

The group met last night to decide our Boisique blend.  As always, it was an interesting blending event.  We ended up liking a blend of 85% Merlot and 15% Malbec the best, with the Merlot being a 50/50 blend of the ID Merlot and WA Merlot.

 

The ID Merlot added some surprising flavors of candied raspberries which was too strong by itself, but was a nice addition when blended in with the WA Merlot.

 

Ray thought the flavor could be dialed down a little bit more (ie: more WA Merlot than ID), and we tried reducing it by 50%, which was too much.

 

Looking at the gallons of merlot in the cellar, we have an 18G of ID merlot, plus 1+G in carboys and topping. So we have an easy option to try a slightly higher blend of WA Merlot, or we can hold the additional 11G of WA Merlot in Carboys for future blending.

 

Here is the blend with 50/50 ID/WA Merlot

 

45G of Boisique

19G of ID Merlot   25%

19G of WA Merlot 

6.75G of Malbec   15%

Recent Winery Activities

My home computer has been down, so I haven't sent blog entries in for awhile. Here is a quick synopsis of recent activities.

 

When topping last week, Ray was concerned that the Merlot in his French Oak barrel was getting too much wood. Part of that is his newer barrel that had a raw lumber taste. We have the option to move that barrel of Merlot to Mike's empty 30G hungarian barrel. If we do that we would want to move the WA Cab from the suspect barrel into Ray's French Oak barrel, which is still pretty new and has good oak. Then we can decide what to do with that suspect barrel.

 

If we decide to transfer the wines then we first need to hydrate and clean the empty barrel with proxycarb (should just need a light cleaning get rid of sulfur). It is important that we don't let the barrel sit out wet for days or it will also get some mold growth inside.  The wines are at minimum SO2 levels right now, so we need to add 15ppm before transferring/racking them.

 

Troy

 

1. Bottling 2009 Cabs

We bottled the 2009 cabernets in early June. The reserve cab blend is very good. The WA cab has a funny taste--we think it may have gotten some spoilage. Our only guess is the SS kegs we transferred it into for the last 2 months must have not been completely clean and the SO2 levels were too low.  There is some WA cab i the reserve blend. Hopefully it doesn't cause problems. The blend ended up being:

 

2009 Reserve Cab
65% ID Cab
25% WA Cab
10% Malbec

 

2. Topping

We have been topping every 2 weeks. Last date was Aug 6th. All wines are sound and have turned the corner and tasting quite good. The WA Merlot and WA Syrah are excellent as is the ID Williamson Cabernet. The others are tasting fine, just not as good.  pping wines tasted suspect. We're not sure what--maybe too high of sulfites added? We marked it as "Suspect" on the container and topped with something else.   The wine cooler is working well.

 

3. Racking

We racked all wines (except the Syrah) off the fine lees in early to mid June.  We decided to not do the additional racking on the syrah based on input from Angie who said while racking and aeration is beneficial to bordeaux grapes, syrah is better to rack less.  The empty barrels were sulfured.

 

BARREL CLEANING PROCEDURE
1. Create a proxycarb solution (15 TBSP Proxy Clean for a 30G) into a 5G carboy and mix it up well.
 
2. Add proxycarb solution and water to fill the barrel. Turn on barrel turner to mix it up.
 
3. Let barrel sit for 24 hours
 
4. Rinse barrel with water
 
5. Rinse barrel with meta/citric solution (1G water, 1 TBSP Meta, 1/2 TBSP citric acid)
 
6. Rinse barrel with water

 

 

 

 

09 Cab Blending

An excellent night of blending that demonstrated the value of trial blending.  We tried 8 blends and found 2 that we are very happy with. It is amazing how changing the blend by just a few percent makes all the difference--even when you are cross blending 2 cabernets together.

 

The final blends:

 

2009 Riverwoods Cabernet Reserve

- 65% ID Clone 2 Cabernet

- 25% WA Clone 6 Cabernet

- 10% ID Malbec

 

2009 Riverwoods Washington Cabernet

- 95% WA Clone 6 Cabernet

- 5% ID Malbec (+/- a percent or two)

 

We can play around with the malbec +/- 2% as we blend the WA Cabernet, to see if we like it better.  We liked 5% malbec but didn't like 10% malbec.  In past cab reserve blends we have had 2.5%, 5% and 7% malbec.

 

 

Racking and Juggling

I expect we will want to add some (5% or so) of the 2010 Malbec to the 09 Cab Reserve.  Since we don't have any "extra" malbec in carboys, we will have to do some juggling to get it out, which we can work into our Spring racking. 

 

Here's the proposed shell game (current wine/barrel listing is at the end of the email). 

 

Troy

 

1. Move 30G WA Merlot from Ray's new American Oak Barrel into Ray's empty 30G French barrel. 

- Mike has cleaned this barrel and it is ready to go.

- We may want to rack out both barrels of WA Merlot at the same time and mix them together.

- We only have 1 extra G of WA Merlot...we may have to top with ID Merlot.

 

2. Combine 2 smaller barrels of WA Cab into Ray's new 30G American

- Clean Ray's barrel good beforehand

- 22G French + 15G Hungarian

 

3. Transfer the Malbec from a 30G Hungarian barrel into a 22G French Barrel (~3-4G will go into the blend).

 

4. Rack the ID Cab in/out of Lee's 15G barrel. We will have to top with WA Cab.

 

5. Rack the ID Merlot in/out of it's current barrel.

 

6. We need to decide if we want to rack the Syrah wines or not.  New information from Angie suggests it is better for Syrah to rack it less often.

 

 
 
Cooler #1:
1. 30G Hungarian, 2010 ID Syrah
2. 22G French, 2010 WA Cabernet
3. 22G French, 2010 WA Syrah
4. 15-18G American, 2010 Idaho Merlot
 
Cooler #2:
1. 15G Hungarian, 2010 WA Cabernet
2. 15G French, 2010 ID Cabernet
3. 15G Stainless, 2009 WA Cabernet
4. 15G Stainless, 2009 ID Cabernet

 
Carboys:
- (1+ 3+5) 9G 2010 WA Syrah
- 3G  2010 ID Merlot
- (5+1+ 5+1) 12G 2009 ID Cabernet
- 1G 2010 WA Merlot
- 3G ID Syrah
 
Cooler #3:
1. 30G French, 2010 WA Syrah
2. 30G Hungarian, 2010 Malbec
3. 26G American, 2010 WA Merlot
4. 30G American, 2010 WA Merlot

5. 15G Stainless, 2009 WA Cab w/ 1G ID Cab (outside cooler #3)

Preparing For Bottling

Today we cleaned 27 cases of bottles, preparing to bottle the 09 cabernet, including some magnums that Bob brought.  Took us about 3 hours.  We tried using one-step this time and liked it.  We think it has some sanatizing properties if the bottles soak for a couple of minutes...although it still isn't clear.  We got some  little sponges and ran them through the large siphon line and the bottling hose, using water pressure. We liked how that worked to clean out the lines.  And we soaked the bottler in a bucket of one-step, so it is ready to go (we will still want to do a quick meta rinse).

 

Blending trials are set for Wed at 6:30pm followed by bottling on Thu at 5:30pm.  This time we're going to pull barrel samples a couple of hours ahead of time so they have time to warm up before blending.  Each of the small carafes holds about 2 cups, or 500ml.  We will probably need 2 full carafes each of the ID and WA cabs plus 1 carafe of the Malbec

 

Inventory of wine in the garage is listed below. I counted fewer gallons of the 2009 wine than expected.  I expected about 60 gallons of 2009 wine and found only 32 gallons (15G of WA Cab and 17G of ID Cab), so I must have missed some. I will go back and double check. Maybe there is another stainless keg with combined 2009 ID/WA cab?  I did double check the corks and we have 300-400 corks, which will be enough.

 

We are tight on extra gallons of some of the 2010 wines, which we need to think about for racking. No extra Malbec and only 1G of WA Merlot (I didn't count any wine in Platypus containers).  We will have to figure out a racking plan.

 

 

Cooler #1:

1. 30G Hungarian, 2010 ID Syrah

2. 22G French, 2010 WA Cabernet

3. 22G French, 2010 WA Syrah

4. 15-18G American, 2010 Idaho Merlot

 

Cooler #2:

1. 15G Hungarian, 2010 WA Cabernet

2. 15G French, 2010 ID Cabernet

3. 15G Stainless, 2009 WA Cabernet

4. 15G Stainless, 2009 ID Cabernet

 

Carboys:

- (1+ 3+5) 9G 2010 WA Syrah

- 3G  2010 ID Merlot

- (5+1+ 5+1) 12G 2009 ID Cabernet

- 1G 2010 WA Merlot

- 3G ID Syrah

 

Cooler #3:

1. 30G French, 2010 WA Syrah

2. 30G Hungarian, 2010 Malbec

3. 26G American, 2010 WA Merlot

4. 30G American, 2010 WA Merlot

 

 

Re: [Riverwoods Wineries] Top and Taste

Clarification. The below statement is in reference to the initial sulfur addition made to sanitize the must before fermentation.

 

> 5. We would like to try changing our sulfur addition from 100ppm to 50ppm on one barrel of wine next year,

> to see what difference it makes. We will have to measure sulfur levels a couple of times in Nov/Dec and Jan

> to see when they drop below 15ppm and then start adding meta early to maintain that level.

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 7:25 AM, Troy Pearse <ttpearse@gmail.com> wrote:

We tasted and topped all the wines on Monday. All wines are coming along well.   The 2 favorites were the WA Merlot in Troy's barrel and the ID Cab in Lee's barrel.

 

The wine appears mostly through MLF, with a couple of barrels still having a tart taste. Another couple weeks and they will be ready to rack off the fine lees.  One barrel (the 20G barrel in the main cooler) of the WA Syrah had a slight off/chemical nose and we added 20ppm of meta to it. We should watch it carefully and clean the barrel well when we rack it off the fine lees next month.

 

The WA Merlot in Ray's barrel doesn't have quite as strong of a lumber taste/smell, but it still isn't as nice as what is in the other barrel. When we rack off the fine lees in 2 weeks we will transfer it to Ray's empty 30G barrel.

 

The WA Cab has good flavors, but is "weaker" this year. We will rotate it into Ray's new barrel, after pulling out the WA Merlot (and cleaning the barrel good with Proxycarb).

 

Trial blending for the 2009 cabernet reserve is set for Tuesday, May 31st, after Bob and Pam get back from their travels, with bottling the next day, Wed June 1st.  We estimate 5 cases of bottles each (get your bottles ready).  This is the second trial blending for the 09 cab reserve and we will be trying blending in some malbec and merlot, as well as making sure the samples are at room temperature.  We will start off the blending with the 2 front-runners from last time.

 

1. 60% WA Cab, 40% ID Cab

2. 60% ID Cab, 40% WA Cab

3. Add 5% Malbec to favorite of #1 vs #2

4. Add 5% Merlot to favorite of #1/#2/#3

 

We discussed some winery sanitation. Copys of the handouts from the seminar are in the winery for everyone and notes have been distributed electronically. A few items we talked about were:

 

1. Scrub around bung-holes with a strong meta solution before topping and clean bungs better.

 

2. Clean barrels with percarbonate (proxycarb) at the end of the season before letting them dry and sulfuring them. (Rinsing at racking is fine unless there is problem in the wine or barrel).

 

3. Clean hoses by soaking in a cleaner like proxycarb or One-step and running sponges/pigs through them.

 

4. Straight-A is a cleaner, but not a sanitizer. We could switch to One-step for winery equipment cleaning in the red bucket and it will clean and sanitize with 2 minutes of contact time.

 

5. We would like to try changing our sulfur addition from 100ppm to 50ppm on one barrel of wine next year, to see what difference it makes. We will have to measure sulfur levels a couple of times in Nov/Dec and Jan to see when they drop below 15ppm and then start adding meta early to maintain that level.

 

 

--
Posted By Troy Pearse to Riverwoods Wineries at 5/10/2011 06:25:00 AM

Top and Taste

We tasted and topped all the wines on Monday. All wines are coming along well.   The 2 favorites were the WA Merlot in Troy's barrel and the ID Cab in Lee's barrel.

 

The wine appears mostly through MLF, with a couple of barrels still having a tart taste. Another couple weeks and they will be ready to rack off the fine lees.  One barrel (the 20G barrel in the main cooler) of the WA Syrah had a slight off/chemical nose and we added 20ppm of meta to it. We should watch it carefully and clean the barrel well when we rack it off the fine lees next month.

 

The WA Merlot in Ray's barrel doesn't have quite as strong of a lumber taste/smell, but it still isn't as nice as what is in the other barrel. When we rack off the fine lees in 2 weeks we will transfer it to Ray's empty 30G barrel.

 

The WA Cab has good flavors, but is "weaker" this year. We will rotate it into Ray's new barrel, after pulling out the WA Merlot (and cleaning the barrel good with Proxycarb).

 

Trial blending for the 2009 cabernet reserve is set for Tuesday, May 31st, after Bob and Pam get back from their travels, with bottling the next day, Wed June 1st.  We estimate 5 cases of bottles each (get your bottles ready).  This is the second trial blending for the 09 cab reserve and we will be trying blending in some malbec and merlot, as well as making sure the samples are at room temperature.  We will start off the blending with the 2 front-runners from last time.

 

1. 60% WA Cab, 40% ID Cab

2. 60% ID Cab, 40% WA Cab

3. Add 5% Malbec to favorite of #1 vs #2

4. Add 5% Merlot to favorite of #1/#2/#3

 

We discussed some winery sanitation. Copys of the handouts from the seminar are in the winery for everyone and notes have been distributed electronically. A few items we talked about were:

 

1. Scrub around bung-holes with a strong meta solution before topping and clean bungs better.

 

2. Clean barrels with percarbonate (proxycarb) at the end of the season before letting them dry and sulfuring them. (Rinsing at racking is fine unless there is problem in the wine or barrel).

 

3. Clean hoses by soaking in a cleaner like proxycarb or One-step and running sponges/pigs through them.

 

4. Straight-A is a cleaner, but not a sanitizer. We could switch to One-step for winery equipment cleaning in the red bucket and it will clean and sanitize with 2 minutes of contact time.

 

5. We would like to try changing our sulfur addition from 100ppm to 50ppm on one barrel of wine next year, to see what difference it makes. We will have to measure sulfur levels a couple of times in Nov/Dec and Jan to see when they drop below 15ppm and then start adding meta early to maintain that level.

 

 

Malic Acid Numbers

We got results back from WineWise on the amount of Malic Acid in the WA Syrah.

 

The initial reading was 3.41 g/L, and the new reading was down to 2.45 g/L. So MLF had definitely started, but it wasn't on track to complete.  Adding the ML Cultures will ensure we get complete MLF.

 

It was interesting and encouraging that we could taste the difference between the wine that had started MLF (from being in the barrel) and the wine that hadn't started MLF (from being in SS).  It confirms our thoughts that MLF improves the red wines, especially in years like 2010 when we have higher malic acid levels because of the growing season.

 

Troy

b

On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Troy Pearse  wrote:

Mike ordered Wyeast liquid ML Cultures from Nampa Brewers and we added them to the 2010 red wines today at the rate of 1pkg per 15G, including carboys and platypus containers.  We expect MLF will take a month, maybe 6 weeks.

 

We smelled and tasted wines. All were sound with no rotten egg or other problems.  The favorite wines were the WA Syrah followed by the WA Merlot, although we didn't taste either of the cabs.

 

A couple of notes:

 

1. The Merlot in Ray's newest barrel continues to get a "lumber" taste (we noticed it last month as well). It is not a good oak taste. We think we want to move the after MLF into the empty 30G barrel (Troy will order more sodium percarbonate). We will clean and dry the barrel and see what we can do to improve it.  We tasted the same wine in another barrel, and there was a significant difference (better).

 

2. The WA Syrah that has been in the barrel the longest has a dramatically reduced tartness to it. We think MLF has been happening from residual ML cultures.  We took a sample to run to WineWise to measure the amount Malic Acid, which Angie had reported as 3.41 at crush time (high).  We tasted the same wine from another barrel, which had been in SS until 3 weeks ago. That sample was much tarter, which supports our hypothesis that MLF is happening in the barrels that have been used in the past.

 

Troy and Mike are going to sign up for the Idaho Wine Council's seminar in late April.  It will be interesting to learn how bigger wineries do sanitation.

 

 

MLF Added

Mike ordered Wyeast liquid ML Cultures from Nampa Brewers and we added them to the 2010 red wines today at the rate of 1pkg per 15G, including carboys and platypus containers.  We expect MLF will take a month, maybe 6 weeks.

 

We smelled and tasted wines. All were sound with no rotten egg or other problems.  The favorite wines were the WA Syrah followed by the WA Merlot, although we didn't taste either of the cabs.

 

A couple of notes:

 

1. The Merlot in Ray's newest barrel continues to get a "lumber" taste (we noticed it last month as well). It is not a good oak taste. We think we want to move the after MLF into the empty 30G barrel (Troy will order more sodium percarbonate). We will clean and dry the barrel and see what we can do to improve it.  We tasted the same wine in another barrel, and there was a significant difference (better).

 

2. The WA Syrah that has been in the barrel the longest has a dramatically reduced tartness to it. We think MLF has been happening from residual ML cultures.  We took a sample to run to WineWise to measure the amount Malic Acid, which Angie had reported as 3.41 at crush time (high).  We tasted the same wine from another barrel, which had been in SS until 3 weeks ago. That sample was much tarter, which supports our hypothesis that MLF is happening in the barrels that have been used in the past.

 

Troy and Mike are going to sign up for the Idaho Wine Council's seminar in late April.  It will be interesting to learn how bigger wineries do sanitation.

 

 

2009 Cab moved off wood

3/6/11: We moved the 2009 reserve cab off wood into stainless and glass. We will blend it with a little 2009 malbec and/or merlot in April.  We added 15ppm of meta to offset oxidation from racking.  Lee's 30G French barrel is rinsed and drying.  It needs to be sulfured after drying for a week.

 

We combined a smaller barrel and SS Keg of WA Syrah and put it into Ray's newest American oak barrel and then moved the ID Merlot from SS and glass into the small wood barrel.  We made a point of transferring some sediment/lees for MLF food.  We need to order ML cultures and get that started.  We could use a couple more of the larger "red top" breathable bungs.

 

We topped and checked all wines. All the wines are sound with no sign of HSO2. 

Travel Shock Experiment

There have been numerous discussions in the wine-world about "Travel Shock" impacting the flavor of a wine when it is shipped to you.  Many people recommend waiting several weeks after receiving a wine to allow it to recover.  Individuals in our group have had similar experiences where wine that they drove to a friend's house (many miles) didn't "taste right" to them, so we decided to run a test to see if we could detect travel shock in a bottle of wine. 

 

We took 2 identical bottles of 2009 Encore wine and exposed one to travel shock and left the other one alone. Prior to the experiment, both bottles had been stored exactly the same. The "Travel Shock" bottle then rode to Lewiston (300 miles) on a paved curvy road. It sat outside for a day in near freezing temperatures (while it's owner fished!), and then was driven a couple more hours and taken inside a warm house where it sat for 2 days.  It then drove 270 miles home and was sat upright next to the control-bottle for 66 hours inside a house. Both bottles were opened for an hour and then blind poured to be compared. 

 

Both wines drank just fine and people generally felt they were the same wine. There were some minor differences noted by some for flavor or smell, but nothing consistent or very significant. 

 

Possible Conclusions:

 

1. Travel shock is not real.

2. 66 hours was enough time to recover from travel shock.

3. The type of wine was not susceptible to travel shock, such as no sediment, not aged, not tannic.

 

Based on this limited result we think drinking wine that has been shipped is "safe" after 3 days.  We may look for other opportunities to try similar experiments in the future.

 

Fwd: Bottles and blending

Forwarding white blending/bottling info from Mike.  I will add $100 paid by Lee to this year's expenses for the Riesling.

 

Troy

 

-----

A gorgeous day!  In about 2 hours, we washed up about 18 cases of non-shouldered bottles in prep for bottling the whites tomorrow starting around noon.  Washing didn't take long due to good precleaning.  Thanks to all of us for doing a better job. 

 

We tried the Reisling and Viogner.  The Reisling has a slight nose of peach, soft finish.  It is Ok by itself.  The Viogner is a cool site Viogner and has little nose; a bit of a tart start with a nice grapefruit finish.  It will go nicely with food.   After tasting 75/25% (both ways) and 50/50% blends, we decided all three blends have merit.  We decided to blend 10 gals each of Reisling/Viogner for 20 gallons of 50/50 blend; 5 gal of Reisling by itself (this one carboy is a bit fizzy)  and 15 gallons of Viogner by itself.   We dumped the container of Reisling marked NO.  It had a bad nose and very poor taste.  We should end up with about 3+ cases of white wine each.  We do need to discuss settling up on the Reisling.  We think Lee purchased it along, since none of the rest of us remember ponying up any $$ to contribute. 

 

We will move the Cabernet into SS and glass within the next few days also.  We will then move the WA Syrah from one 18 gal wood barrel and one 15.5 gal SS keg into a 30 gal wood barrel.  We will also move the Idaho Merlot from the 15.5 gal SS keg + the 4 gal in carboys into the vacated 18 gal barrel now containing WA Syrah leaving a little extra for topping.   We will talk more on the moving and consolidation of wines tomorrow during bottling of the whites.   

 

Winery Update

2/24/2011: Cabernet Tasting Trials. We tried 100% samples, 60/40, 50/50 and 40/60. Some people liked the 60/40 and some liked the 40/60. We all agreed that the wine was to cold to get a good feel for it.  We tried adding 5% malbec into a blend and most people liked that better.
 
We're going to move the ID Cabs into Stainless Steel Kegs and glass carboys to get it off of the oak and wait to bottle until the Malbec has gone through MLF (sometime in May) and then do another trial blending.  The 2010 cabs were topped up some, but not all the way. The extra 1G of 2010 wine in a carboy had a funky smell and taste.  We'll need to address moving the wine around soon.
 
We are preparing to bottle our Viognier. We may blend it with the left-over McAurthur Riesling. Meta levels are low, so we should add a little meta (15ppm), which will mostly blow off as we bottle. We decided to not filter this year because of prior issues. But we'll need to keep an eye on the wines to see if they pop corks from MLF.
 
2/17/2011: Topped and Tasted. All wines coming along well. ID Syrah and Malbec are over their HSO2 smell.  We tried a bottle of our 2006 cabernet. We had a glass poured undisturbed and then shook the bottle (similar to the repetitive inverting that happened during the recent comparative tasting) and poured a second glass. The biggest different was the clarity. The second glass was very cloudy.  There was some difference in the nose from disturbing the sediment, but it wasn't as evident as what we remembered from the comparative tasting. Ray suggested that the difference may be attributed to bottle variation or storage variation.  In either case we agreed that it would be worth opening bottles to check them before submitting them to a contest in the future.

2-8-2011 Viognier Lab Report

We ran tests at WineWise on the Viognier in preperation for bottling.  SO2 is at 8ppm and Malic acid is 1.70 g/L.

 

White wines require a higher level of SO2 than red wines and our low SO2 levels are likely contributing to our loosing the "freshness" and flavor in our white wines come Spring.  We need to discuss increasing our SO2 levels for whites when we rack them off the gross lees. Our Sulfites notes page gives a target of 35ppm for white wines.

 

The lab report shows a significant level of Malic acid in the Viognier. We didn't measure Malic acid on the must so we don't know if the amount of Malic acid has changed since primary fermentation.

 

The Viognier was fermented in a wood barrel and sat in that barrel for 4 weeks after fermentation was complete. So if it was exposed to ML cultures from the barrel I think it would have gone through MLF at that point as temperatures were warm enough. The only thing that would have inhibited it from going through ML would have been high SO2 levels.  But given our current level of 8ppm SO2 I would estimate that the SO2 was around 20ppm when we racked it out of the barrel--not too high for MLF to occur.

We should taste the Viognier to determine if we want it to go through MLF. If it has a very tart-apple taste then going through MLF will soften the wine. Going through MLF will also reduce the overall fruitiness.

 

If we decide we like the taste of the wine we can proceed with bottling it, with the addition of SO2 prior to racking it out of containers to protect it (we'll loose approx 10ppm from bottling).  The risk of bottling before MLF is that it could happen in the bottles which will result in corks-a-poppin. 

 

Troy

Rotten Egg Smell Mostly Gone

Last weekend we checked the Malbec and Syrah and they smelled much better. Just a small amount of rotten eggs in the Malbec. We racked them both off any sediment that had dropped and added 15ppm of meta (but not over copper).  We are very happy with the progress and think we've exorcised the rotten spirits.  We topped the rest of the wines. All smelled fine.

We tasted the 2009 cabernets. Both taste great and are at a good oak balance.  We will do some tasting trials and bottle in late February.  We don't have any Malbec or Petit Verdot this year so we'll be just blending the 2 cabs.

 

We have 60+ gallons, which will be 25+ cases (5 cases each...YEA!).  Everyone start getting your bottles ready.  We need 5 cases of shouldered bottles for the cab, plus we'll need some to bottle the Riesling.  We have to decide if we can bottle the Viognier now.  It hasn't had a chance to go through MLF and could blow corks if we bottle it now without filtering.  I think we're all hesitant about filtering because of the problems we've had.

 

 Previous Blog Entry from Sat, Jan 8, 2011

Ray and Mike racked the Idaho Merlot on Sat. 1/8.  We ended up with 20 gallons (15.5 keg; 3 gal carb; 1 gal carb; 1 plat) out of approximately 22 + gallons of pressings.  The wine smelled good, tasted good (slightly tart).  We added a touch of meta per the book.   The other barrels we checked smelled OK and were only down slightly.  Mike 

 

Racking

We racked the ID Syrah off the Gross Lees today. It has some rotten egg smell so we added 20ppm meta and racked it back into the barrel over copper

 

We racked the ID Cab off the Gross Lees. It smells great.

 

The Malbec is better, but still smells. We added 20ppm meta and racked it out/in over copper.

 

We found that the 15G Hungarian barrel had WA Cab in it....still on the gross lees. Ooops.  We racked it and added 20ppm meta. No problems detected.

 

We still need to rack the Merlot off the Gross lees, sometime in the next 2 weeks.  The Syrah and Malbec need to be checked in a couple weeks and racked again.

 

All barrels were topped.

 

Possibly Low SO2 in WA Cab

Bill's group that got Dennis' Sangio grapes and Larry's red-grape blend did some testing at WineWise. I thought the results were worth passing along.

 

The pH was about what we expected, but the SO2 levels were much lower than expected.  I expected about 15ppm and they had 4ppm.  What I think happened is that their 60G barrel was down 5 gallons while they waited for Larry's wine to ferment. During that time they had more air exposure, which drained down the SO2 level.

 

One reason I bring this up, is because we experienced the same thing in our WA Cabernet. We found the barrel down considerably when we went to rack it off the gross lees (it sat for over a month this way).  I expect that this means we also burned extra SO2 and are down close to zero.  I recommend we add some meta to the WA Cabernet.  If we want, we can have WineWise measure the SO2 levels (for  $ 13), or we can just add 10-15ppm to the wine (remembering that only 1/2 of that makes it into Free SO2).

 

Troy

 

 

Sample # 1		Result:		Date:		Method:
2010 Sangiovese
pH		3.14		12/15/2010		ph probe
Free SO2	<5		mg/L (ppm)		12/15/2010		Auto Titrator
4.03				mg/L (ppm)
Sample #2
2010 Grenache
pH		3.46		12/15/2010		ph probe

Last Pressing

The ID Malbec finally dropped below 0 brix and we pressed it Merlot today.  We pressed moderately hard and got about 21 gallons. It's resting in a SS Keg and carboys until we have an open barrel from bottling the Cab reserve.  The Merlot had been on the skins for about a month and picked up quite a bit of skins/seeds tannins.  It took a long time to ferment because of the cool temperatures.

 

We racked the ID Malbec off the gross lees.  It had a very bad rotten egg smell (HSO2) so we added 20ppm sulfites and racked it over copper flashing in and out of the barrel.  That helped the smell some, but we'll need to rack it again in 2 - 3 weeks to get it off of the precipitants.

 

We also racked the WA Cab off the gross lees. It had been sitting for quite awhile finishing fermentation, as we pressed it with some sugar left.  We were surprised to see the barrel down a good 3 inches. We didn't realize it was that far down.  The taste in the barrel was OK, but not as much fruit as a carboy.

 

We still have the ID Syrah, Cab and Merlot to rack off the gross lees, and we need to rack the Malbec again.

 

Idaho Cab Pressed

We pressed the Williamson Cabernet today.  Flavors and color are great. We are very pleased with how it turned out.

We pressed pretty hard and got almost 19 gallons from 27G of must (about a 70% yield).  It was a small batch and went very quickly.

Wine is in Lee's recooped Demtos barrel plus a 3G carboy and platypus.  

Pictures are updated in Picasa  http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010 

ID Cab Ready To Press

The Williamson Cabernet has dropped below 0 brix (0.998 specific gravity), after fermenting for 25 days (31 days on the skins, including the cold soak).  Flavor and color are excellent and it's time to press it.  It's a small batch (26G of must) so it will go quickly.  The cab will go into Lee's re-cooped Demtos barrel plus a few carboys.

The ID Merlot is still fermenting slowly. It is at 4.5 brix and 65 degrees. It will take another week to finish fermenting. It was crushed on Nov 13th, so it has been on the skins for 3 weeks so far.  We are tentatively set for the following Sunday, Dec 12th, to press the merlot.  The merlot will go into a SS keg until we bottle the 2009 reserve cab.

Because of the late harvest and cold temperatures this year we have had to put warm water bottles in the must and wrap the fermentation containers with blankets and run a garage heater to keep them warm enough to ferment.  We are avoiding pressing before they are done fermenting to ensure that they don't get stuck with some residual sugar.  The WA Cab (which was pressed early because of green seeds) has taken a month to drop the last few brix. It is at zero, but still bubbling slightly.  

The platypus containers with Malbec and WA Cab had quite a bit of gas build-up in them, showing they are still fermenting some.  We vented the excess gas and you can really smell the HSO2 on the Malbec. We need to rack it off the gross lees in another week and should consider running it over the copper flashing.  The ID Syrah and WA Cab also need to be racked off the gross lees.

Malbec and Tempranillo Pressed 11/27

We pressed the Tempranillo and Malbec on 11/27. We got 36 gallons of Malbec from 56G of must (64% yield) and  65.5G of Tempranillo (63% yield).    The Malbec is in a 30G Hungarian barrel.  Here is the count of gallons of Tempranillo that everyone took.  We got less Tempranillo than we expected so Riverwoods ended up not keeping any, although Michele said she might be interested in doing a Tempranillo/Syrah blend with us.

 

Tempranillo Gallons

Michele and Tom: (15G + 3G) 18G

Jim: (15 + 2.5) 17.5G

Kirkland: 15G

Casey: 15G

 

The cab and merlot are still fermenting slowly. Today (11/28) the Cab was at 3 brix (down 2 brix in 2 days) and the Merlot was at 10 brix (also down 2 brix).  We are continuing to put warm water jugs in them to keep the temps up. We might consider trying wrapping them in a blanket or something to help them retain heat better.  They will be ready to press by the end of this week. It could be done Thursday, before the Williamsons come over, or on Saturday afterwards.

 

Troy

Malbec and Tempranillo Ready To Press

The cap is falling on the Malbec and the Tempranillo is at 0 brix, but still active.  They are both ready to press.

 

The Merlot is fermenting slowly at 12 brix, and so is the cab which is at 5 brix. They haven't dropped muchin the last 4 days because their temperatures have dropped to 58-60 degrees, below their desired range for good fermentation, due to the near record cold temperatures outside. We've been trying to warm them with hot water jugs and running a heater in the garage to get them going better, but they likely won't be ready to press for another week.

Winery Update

Punchdown tonight. The malbec has fermented fast and is at 1 brix, with a slight HSO2 smell. The Tempranillo is at 5.5, the Id cab 7.5, the Merlot is 15.5. We will try and press saturday at noon.

We got a ph report back and phs are down in the 3.57-3.63 range, which is great.  No further acid additions needed.

Fermentation Update

We punched down and checked the grapes around noon today.  We put a 2G jug of warm water into the ID cab to get its temp up.  Everything is fermenting well. We'll re-check the pH on Monday and do a second adjustment where needed.

 

• ID Cab is at 8.5 brix, 62 degrees
• Merlot is at 21.5 brix, 66 degrees
• Malbec is at 12 brix, 72 degrees
• Tempranillo is at 16.5 brix, 66 degrees
• The WA Cab still appears to be fermenting slightly in the carboys. We should check it's brix.

 

Upcoming Activities:

• Transfer Merlot from Mike's 30G Hungarian into Ray's new 30G American Barrel
• Press the ID Cab and Malbec after Thanksgiving. The ID Cab goes into Lee's 15G Demptos. Malbec goes into Mike's hungarian 30G.
• Press the Tempranillo and Merlot no later than Dec 1st, to give us time to cleanup the winery.
• Rack the ID Syrah and WA Cab off the Gross Lees around Dec 1.
• We would like to get the winery cleaned up and everything put away in time for the Williamson's visit, Friday Dec 3rd.
• Rack the Tempranillo/Malbec/Merlot/IDCab off the Gross Lees the second week of December.

Acid Adjstments on Kornze Grapes

We adjusted the acids today on the Tempranillo, Merlot and Malbec we got from Larry to get the pH down to 3.7 or so. We added 1/2 of the adjustment now and we'll re-test the pH before adding more.  Our pH meter isn't working so we'll get the must re-tested at WineWiseIdaho (re-tests are no charge).

 

We used the acid addition calculator on vinoenolgy.com (http://vinoenology.com/calculators/acid-addition/) with 1 slight adjustment. Instead of using gallons of must we used gallons of wine--which is how we've done the calculations in the past.

 

All of the grapes are fermenting well and tonight we added nutrient at the punch-down.  The additions are listed below.

 
 
Tempranillo, 104 G Must, est 73G wine
- Sarting pH is 3.92,  Target is 3.72.
- Acid addition total of 2 g/l,  553 grams, 37 TBSP (add 1/2 at a time)
 
Malbec, 56G Must, est 39G wine
Starting pH is 3.85, Target us 3.75
- Acid addition total of 1 g/l, 148 grams, 10 TBSP (add 1/2 at a time)
 
Merlot, 27G Must, est 19 G wine
Starting pH is 3.99, Target is 3.74
- Acid addition total of 2.5 g/l, 180 grams, 12 TBSP (add 1/2 at a time)
 

Williamson Syrah Pressed

We pressed the Williamson Syrah on Tuesday 11/16.  It was at 0 brix and the cap was starting to fall.  Flavor and color were great!! We're very happy with it. We got 53 G of pressed wine out of 73G must (plus 7G water). We pressed pretty hard--flavors were good. Unfortunatly we lost some wine including 5G carboy that was dropped and some wine that was spilled. Jim took home 6G in carboys and we set aside a 5G carboy for Casey (Ray's friend).

We racked the WA Syrah off the gross lees and into wood. The flavor continues to be a bit tart. Talking with Angie about it, she think's it is the higher amount of malic acid that wine has (3.41 g/l). It will soften after MLF.  It will be interesting to see the wine change over time.

We also racked the Viognier off the gross lees. It's been sitting in the 60G barrel after finishing fermenting, for about a month. It is tasting pretty good, you can taste the oak and it has some nice varietal flavors.  It's a bit tart. Might be worth going through MLF? We have 27G of VIognier in SS and carboys.  The 60G barrel has been rinsed well and had a meta/citric rinse. After a week of drying upside-down we need to burn a sulfur wick in it.

We innoculated Larry's grapes (tempranillo, merlot and malbec) after a 4-5 day cold soak.  Punch-down last night showed them starting activity but no cap yet.  All of them have a high PH so we will have to do some acid adjustments. Troy and Ray will start that today (Friday).

Roger's cab is still fermenting well. It was down to 14.5 brix on Tuesday.

A note on the carboys. When Lee and I were punching down on Wednesday we ran into a of 5G carboy that had some extra racked WA Syrah but NO bung!. I looked around and didn't see one that had popped out.  One of the 1G stoppers was loose and 1 of the stainless keg bungs had popped open. I marked those containers with a piece of blue tape. Let's keep an eye on them, and the rest of the bungs as well.

 

There is some new wood in the garage to check out. Lee had his Demtos barrel re-cooped and Ray bought a new 30G American barrel for the WA Merlot.

Fwd: Larry's grape info

Forwarding this email from Mike to the Riverwoods Blog

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Margaret Dimmick

Date: Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 1:29 PM
Subject: Larry's grape info

On 11/12 Bob, Ray, Mike went to Larry's and picked grapes for both ourselves and Bill Thompson's group. Grapes were .75/lb and Larry charged us $75 for crushing. Mike paid Larry for both the grapes and crushing. 1,930 X .75 = $1,447.50 + $75 = ($1,522.50)

BILLS: 150# Granache/40# Sangio/20# Barbera= 210#must sanitized 25.5 brix (small dark blue barrel)

Bill owes Mike $157.50 for grapes and $8.50 for crushing = $165.75.

OURS:

420# Malbec 56 gallons must 25.5 brix ? ph sanitized added ice bottles on noon 11/13 (microbin)

300# Merlot est. 27 gallons must 27 brix ?ph sanitized added ice bottles on noon 11/13 (White barrel)

1000# Temp 104 gallons must 26 brix ?ph sanitized added ice bottles noon on 11/13. (macrobin)

ID Cab Inoculated

We inoculated the ID Cab with Pasteur Red yeast after a 5 day cold soak.  We're doing more cold soaking this year and liking the color/flavors we're getting. Our first good cold soak was last year with the Petite Sirah Port, which we cold soaked to extract color/flavor early because knew we would have to stop fermentation early.

 

Because the Brix on the ID Cab were high (29.1) we needed to bring them down. The pH was 3.73, so we used the minimum water to avoid raising the pH too much. Pasteur Red will ferment up to 16% alcohol, so we needed to bring it down from 29.1 to around 27.5.  We add about 1.7G of water total to 25-26G must (from 285# of grapes).

 

The ID Syrah is still fermenting well, but is slowing down.

 

We will get grapes from Larry this week (tempranillo, merlot, malbec). He is going to crush for us (THANKS, LARRY!)

 

Crush, Press, Press

A BIG night in the winery.

 

We were able to get ahold of a little of Roger's cab that was picked today. With the good late weather he was able to get it ripe.  The seeds were good and brown. Fruit was saggy and slightly dehydrated with some raisins.  We got 25-26G Must out of 285# of grapes, which should give us about 17G of pressed wine.  It's been sanitized with a rounded TBSP of meta and is on cold soak for 4-5 days.  The Brix came in very high, 31.5 on our Hydrometer with a PH of 3.45. Troy or Mike will run a juice sample down to WineWise on Thursday to verify the pH and Brix numbers before we do any adjustments to lower the Brix.

 

We pressed the WA Cab and got about 44G. It had been on the skins for 10 days (4 days cold soak, 6 days fermenting).  It had great color. Dark and rich. Flavors were good, but still sweet as it's around 14 brix. We pressed it earlier than normal because we wanted to avoid contact with the green seeds as the alcohol levels rose. We pressed lightly to avoid any seed tannins and to keep the pH lower.

 

We pressed the WA Syrah, which was at 0 brix but still fermenting slowly, and got 76G. It has been on the skins for 14 days, including a 4 day cold soak. The taste had recently turned acidic. We're not sure why. We did do a small acid correction before starting fermentation...maybe it's from that. We'll keep an eye on it.

 

 

Time To Press The WA Syrah

Ray, Troy and Lee punched down tonight and checked the grapes while we enjoyed a Bread Pudding and Rum Sauce that Lee made. Yum!

 

The WA Syrah is at 0 Brix and the taste is suddenly tart. We want to press right away to prevent it from extracting any more of those flavors.  Ray will coordinate sometime on Wed, either during the afternoon or evening.

 

The WA Cab is down to 16 brix and is tasting very good.  We could press it tomorrow, which would give us 10 days on the skins (4 pre-soak and 6 fermenting), or we can wait a few more days. Normally we leave the cab on the skins as long as possible. We don't want to leave the WA Cab on the skins until the cap drops this year because of the green seeds (think of the bitter taste in the Merlot this year!).  We want to press when it hits about 10 brix--so pressing Wednesday is close enough.  When we do press the WA Cab we want to press lightly to keep from extracting green flavors and raising the pH.

 

The ID Syrah is just starting to ferment. It's cold, 60 degrees. We sent a sample to WineWise for Analysis and should have numbers back tomorrow. We checked the pH of a sample taken at the same time and it took 5-6 readings before it was consistent. (3.67, 3.71, 3.72, 3.73, 3.73, 3.73).  We'll compare the results with what we get back from WineWise.  NOTE: The PH is higher than we initially measured--likely because we added 7.5G of water, which lowered the Brix, but raised the pH.

 

Lee has been wanting to figure out how to do a little of Roger's cab this year, to blend with the Merlot or the Syrah. Roger has worked hard to get it ripe and he thinks it will be good.  Ray and I did some calculations. We have room for 9-10 barrels in the coolers over the summer, plus 4-6' space for carboys and stainless kegs.  We have 10 barrels now, and two of them have reserve cab. That leaves 8 in the cooler over the summer. So we think we can make 15-20G of Roger's cab work.  We could put it in stainless until the reserve cabs are bottled then rotate it into a barrel, or get a new barrel.  Ray has been thinking about getting a new barrel for the Merlot and rotating out his oldest barrel, the 22G Recoop French that is in its 6th season.  That would give some extra capacity.  Lee is going to call Roger to see if he has #350 of his Cabernet available.

 

I've sent Larry and email about pick dates for his grapes--but no response yet. I'll pass it along when I get it. We're still thinking it will be around 11/10.  I think we can get Larry to crush for us.

 

We talked about a time when we could all get together and have the Williamsons over to the winery. They asked for it to be a Friday. Schedules are hectic the end of November so we're looking at the first Friday in December, 12/3/2010. Check your calendars.

 

We need to step-up our Barrel Cleaning efforts to make sure we are ready for pressing. For the WA Syrah we may press into Stainless to give us more time. We'll transfer it to barrels when we rack off the gross lees in a couple weeks.

 

Here's the breakdown of wine and barrels that is shaping up. 

 

Ray's 30G French: 2009 ID Cab (Reserve)

Bob's 20G French: 2009 WA Cab (Reserve)

Mike's 30G Hungarian #1: WA Merlot

Mike's 30G Hungarian #2: WA Syrah

Lee's 30G French: WA Syrah

Ray's New 30G American: WA Merlot

Troy's 26G American: WA Cab

Ray's 22G French: ID Syrah

Lee's 22G French: ID Malbec

Troy's 15G Hungarian: ID Merlot

Bob's 15G American: Roger's Cab

Stainless/Carboys:  Tempranillo until 20G reserve barrel opens up

 

Other Barrels

Michele and Tom's 15G Hungarian: Tempranillo

Michele and Tom's 15G French: WA Merlot

Jim's 15G Barrel: Tempranillo

Jim 10G Carboys:  Syrah

Kirk's 15G Container: Tempranillo

Ray's Friend Carboys  7G Syrah, Tempranillo?

 

Yeast added to ID Syrah

Lee and I pitched yeast in the ID Syrah. We used Pasteur Red and GoFerm. The syrah has good color and I took a sample for analysis at WineWise.

 

The ID Cab is fermenting, but the cap wasn't solid.  Temp was 68-70 degrees.

 

The WA Syrah had a good cap, but was easy to punch down. 

 

We stirred the VIognier, but looking inside it is quiet. We can rack it off the gross lees in the next week or so.

 

 

Winery Update

We measured brix this afternoon.  The WA Syrah is at 4 brix and 70 degrees. It has been fermenting for a week, plus a 4 day cold soak. It would be nice to see it go another week or 10 days.

 

The ID Cab is fermenting well now, has a good cap and is at 24 brix and 62 degrees. I added 80 grams of Fermaid to the ID Cab for it's first nutrient dose. That's about a 125% dose, since the nitrogen levels showed up a little low.

 

The ID Syrah is in a cold soak.  The brix were high (28-30) so I added about 7.5G of filtered tap water to get it down to 26 brix. I'll take a sample down to WineWise Monday to get a juice panel run.  I expect to innoculate Monday night which would be a 4 day cold soak.

 

The Viognier appears to be done fermenting--we should pull a sample and check the Brix. It can safely sit under it's blanket of CO2 for another few days--or more--and soak up some more oak.

 

Looking forward to the next 2 weeks:

 

- Bob has been working on cleaning up the barrels (Thanks Bob!). They are better, but some may need a second treatment of ProxyCarb to get out the nail polish smell.

 

- We need to rack the Merlot and the Viognier off the gross lees sometime next week. We could do it Wednesday this week or the following Tuesday.

  

- The WA Syrah should ferment until the cap drops.  That could be another week. We'll have to watch it. I'd like to press it on Tue, Nov 9th if we can.

 

- We want to press the WA Cab before the cap drops to limit extraction of those green seeds. Maybe with 10 brix left. Probably a week or so. Could work out to be the same timing as pressing the WA Syrah.

 

- We expect Larry's grapes around Nov 10th.  We need to have pressed a couple of bins before then. I will ask him to crush for us.  We'll have to coordinate getting some containers out to him for picking and crushing. Note: I've put my trailer away. It can be pulled out at any time.

 

ID Syrah Picked, WA Cab Innoculated

We picked up 700# of Syrah from Williamson's today and crushed it for 72G of Must.  We added about 8-10# of Viognier to co-ferment. We had more, but the fruit had started to spoil from sitting so long.  The Syrah fruit was in great shape. Grapes were slightly dehydrated with saggy skins.  Seeds were good and nutty brown. Some berries had more juice than others. Brix came in at 30 on the Hydrometer, so probably 28.5.  PH came in surprisingly low around 3.5-3.6.  We'll get a juice panel run on it to check sugars, ph and nitrogen levels.  We sanitized the must and it is in cold soak for a few days.

 

The WA Cab has been in cold soak for 4 days, and color has been getting better every day.  pH had dropped from 3.89 to 3.77 after our addition of 1 g/l of Tartaric acid, which is what we expected. We decided to make a second addition of 1 g/l (11.32 TBSP) to get the PH into a safer zone.  This cab will be used for blending into the Bordeaux blend, so we're not overly concerned about it being a bit tart. But if we feel the taste is to tart then we'll stick the barrel outside this winter for awhile to do some cold stabilization and precipitate out some of the acid.  We also inoculated the Cab with Pasteur Red yeast and GoFerm.

 

The WA Syrah is fermenting strongly and is down to 15 Brix and is tasting FABULOUS!  We did a second Fermaid-K nutrient addition (75% dose since the brix were a bit lower).  The temp was a bit warm at 77 degrees so we threw in a frozen jug of water to try and cool it down a bit.

 

The Viognier bubbler is slowing down considerably and is close to being done fermenting. We will rack it into Stainless in the next few days.

 

Larry's grapes (Tempranillo, Malbec, Merlot) are still a good week out, enjoying some late hang time.  Weather looks favorable.

Syrah and Cab Acid Adjusted

PH on the Cab was 3.89 and the Syrah was more like 3.75. We added 1.0 g/l of Tartaric Acid to the Cab (11.32 TBSP) and 0.5 g/l to the Syrah (9.2 TBSP).  We will measure the pH and see if the cab needs more adjustment.

 

The WA Syrah is fermenting with a heavy cap and we will add some fermaid-k tonight. 

 

The cab is in a cold-soak for a couple more days to get good color before we start it fermenting. We plan to shorten the time on the skins for the cab and press once Brix drops below 10. The goal is to focus on skins exposure while there is less alcohol then get it off the skins to keep from extracting the green flavors from the seeds.  Color is getting better on the cab. Here is a picture of the color 12 hours after pressing and then 24 hours later.

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010#5532518301727108962 

Merlot Pressed, Cab Crushed, Syrah Innoculated

A busy day at the winery, but we had LOTs of help.

 

Cheryl drove over to Walla Walla on Saturday and picked up Cabernet from RiverRock Vineyard.  We got about 600#.  Fruit was tasty but seeds and stems are a little bit greener than normal.  Chemistry came in great: 26+ Brix and Ph 3.6-3.7.  We crushed it and with a small nick and cleaned up as many stems from the must as we could. We'll limit the skins time this year to keep from extracting the green flavors.

 

The Merlot has been fermenting for 18 days and was down to about 1 Brix with a soggy cap. We pressed it and got 85G of wine.  That's about a 75% yield, remembering that we added about 10G of water to reduce the brix.  It is in a 30G Hungarian and 28G American oak plus carboys. We'll rack it off the gross lees in about a week.

 

The WA Syrah had been in a cold soak for 4 days. It is also running high on Brix (28.5) so we added about 10.5G to reduce the Brix to 26 Brix (14.5% alcohol).  We inoculated it with Pasteur Red yeast and GoFerm. This is the first time we've used the bulk yeast so it took some time to figure out the measurements. We estimate a 5 gram package of yeast has about 1 1/8 tsp which is good for 5G of must. So for the 105G of Must we added about 8 TBSP of yeast. 

 

Several empty barrels have a strong VA (nail polish remover/acetone) smell. We've ordered more ProxyCarb to clean them up.

 

Pictures are uploaded to our Picasa album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010

 

 

 

 

 

 

2009 Final Bottling

We did our final blending and bottling tonight for the 2009 grapes (excluding the cabernets, which will stay in a barrel for 6 more months). 

 

The tasting trials were the longest and most difficult we've done to date.  We tried to find a reasonable Boisique blend, but could not. The merlot just wasn't good enough this year.  We ended up with an Encore blend of Petite Sirah, Syrah and Malbec that we liked and a "Tailgate Red" blend with the rest of the wine.  The final blends were:

 

2009 Encore

50% Syrah

32% Petite Sirah

18% Malbec

 

2009 Tailgate Red

76% Merlot

15% Malbec

5% Cab Franc

4% Syrah

 

Photos from the night are uploaded to the Riverwoods 2010 album on Picasa at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010

 

 

 

Merlot Punch down report

Punched down Merlot at 9 pm. Cap was dense. Color and flavor continue to improve. Must was  at 21.5 percent and 75 degrees.

Fermentation has been slow. It was time for the second nutrient addition. I Added 150 grams of Fermaid-k, Which is 150 percent dose, to offset the low nitrogen levels.

Ready for final bottling

We will bottle the Bosique and Encore on Thursday, after the blending trials.  Blending trials are set to start at 5-5:30pm. Bring a snack to share.

 

We will wash bottles Wednesday at noon.  We have about 84 gallons of wine, which is 420 bottles total.  I anticipate around 49-50 gallons of Boisique (250 bottles, ~21 cases of shouldered bottles). The remaining 170 bottles will be Encore (or Encore and Cousins), which can be non-shouldered or shouldered.  Cleaning 21 cases of Shouldered and 14 cases of Non-Shouldered should do us.

 

Here is a breakdown of wine we have left.

 

37G       Merlot

21.5G    Malbec

15G       Cousins (50/50)

8G         Syrah

2G         Cab Franc

 

For Boisique we'll try 3 blends to start:

80% Merlot, 20% Malbec

75% Merlot, 25% Malbec

71% Merlot, 25% Malbec, 4% Cab Franc

 

For the left-over wine we will try:

 

1. Syrah, Petite Syrah, Malbec  (2 cousins and an in-law?)

2. Syrah, Petite Syrah (2 cousins)

3. Syrah, Malbec (standard encore)

 

 

 

Merlot Is Fermenting Strongly

The merlot has started fermenting and there is a thick cap on top.

 

We pitched yeast yesterday. 23 packages of Pasteur Red yeast plus Go Ferm nutrient.  We added about 100 grams of Fermaid-K mid-day Sunday to help the fermentation along and will make another Fermaid-K addition when the brix drops to around 20.

 

We did a cold soak for 2 days at about 60 degrees. The must temperature today was 65 degrees, which is a good temp at the lower end of the optimum range (64-86). We would like to keep it on the cooler side to get a slower fermentation.

WA Syrah/Merlot Update

I talked with Angie today. The Washington (Double Canyon) Syrah is expected to be here Saturday the 16th, possibly Friday.  She said ripeness is good and they are waiting for acids to balance out before they pick. 

 

Angie ran some lab tests on the WA Merlot and said the nutrients came back very low and she recommends a good dose of nutrients to ensure the fermentation is healthy and doesn't stick.  I'll review our planned GoFerm & Fearmaid-K dose with her recommendation.  She also recommended some Brix reduction with 9G of filtered or bottled water.

 

We have a Trial Blending set for Thursday Oct 14th for the Bosique, followed by bottling.  We might also bottle the Encore at that time, if we have enough bottles ready.  How about if we do the same time : Trials at 5:30pm followed by bottling?

 

I've been rotating frozen water jugs into the must to keep it cool. It is holding at 60 degrees with no signs of fermentation.  I will ameliorate tonight and innoculate Saturday morning (details below, for reference) and then we will need to start doing punchdowns 3x day.

 

Troy

 

Since we have high brix and low nutrient we'll use a slightly higher amount of yeast and GoFerm.  They recommend 1.2 grams of yeast, 1.5 grams of GoFerm in 30ml (1oz) of water of per gallon of must.

-Yeast is added to warm water (104º F) containing Go-Ferm and allowed to soak for 20 minutes.

- Stir it gently to break-up any clumps. Wait 15-30 minutes, stir a second time.

*Do not go beyond 30 minutes in the hydration solution or the yeast will begin to starve.

- Then a small amount of the must is added to the yeast starter and the mixture is allowed to sit for another 20 minutes. The yeast is then ready to be introduced to the must.

- The next day add an initial dose of Fermaid-K nutrient once fermentation starts. 1 gram per gallon of must.  Once the Brix drops to by 33% add a second dose of the Fermaid-K.

 

 

Merlot Crush

We picked up 1,000# of Red Mountain (WA) Merlot today that we were lucky enough to get through Dennis (Thanks Dennis!). The fruit was FANTASTIC! Nice ripeness of the berries, stems and seeds. Flavor was great and there was a good amount of concentrated juice. We are VERY excited to have it in the winery and see what we can do with it.

Dennis had his fruit crushed and checked and it read 28.2 Brix and 3.53 pH--amazing. When we checked ours it came out a solid 30 Brix on the Hydrometer. Dennis stopped by and had a refractometer and it read just under 29. So we'll say it's somewhere between 29 and 30. Our pH meter wouldn't calibrate, so we couldn't check the pH. We'll get a new crystal and check it later but we assume it will be 3.6 or so, based on Dennis' numbers.

The potential alcohol for a 29/30 Brix reading is 16.75-17.5%, which is too high for Pasteur Red yeast. We need to get it down to the 15-16% range to ensure a complete fermentation, plus we've found that when the alcohol gets up that high it makes the wine too hot and unbalanced. So we will discuss ameliorating the wine.

To drop us into the 26-27 brix range we need about 8-12G of water (using the online calculator at: http://vinoenology.com/calculators/chaptalization-and-water-dilution/ that we've used before). We should look at adding the water early in the fermentation cycle so we get more skins exposure (ideally during the cold soak). After crush we estimate we have about 99G of Must. We added 4 TBSP of meta to sanatize the must and will do a cold soak for 2 days and innoculate Friday night or Saturday morning using the Pasteur Red and some GoFerm nutrient.

Photos have been uploaded to the Riverwoods 2010 Wine Photos, at the end of the album.

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010

Troy

2009 Magnafique

We bottled  our 2009 Magnafique Bordeaux Blend tonight.  It took a record 6 blending trials before the group decided on the blend, which ended up being:

 

75% Idaho Cabernet

10% Cabernet Franc

10% Malbec

5% Merlot

 

We tried lots of combinations without any clear favorites until the very end.  We tried blends without any merlot and blends without any malbec, but we liked the complexity of having them both in the blend.  Actually we would have liked to have more merlot in the blend but this year's merlot didn't blend as well.

 

We did taste the fined merlot vs the unfined merlot and the difference was amazing. The merlot that had been fined with egg whites was much smoother with less bitter tannins more fruit.  We racked the remaining merlot off the egg whites, combined the unfined and fined wine and added 2 more egg whites. We will let that sit for 2 weeks and then do a Boisique Blending Trial on Oct 13 or 14, followed by bottling.

 

We've heard that WA is picking merlot in the next few days.  We expect Idaho is a week or 2 behind that.  We are thinking the ID Viognier will be ready in the next week, followed by the WA Syrah then the ID Tempranillo, ID Merlot and Malbec and then the ID Syrah.  The WA Cabernet will be the last grape sometime around Oct 20-24.  It is going to be a very busy October!

 

We will have to get a plan together about winery coverage because several members will be out in late October: Troy, Ray and Mike will all be out the week of Oct 18th.

 

Photos from the last few activities are uploaded to Picasa (at the end of the Wine2010 album).

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010 

 

 

Trial Blending #2 on Thursday

Trial blending for our Bordeaux Blend is Thursday. We're planning on starting at 5:30pm and having some snackies while we taste and then bottling after we decide on the blend.    Bring something to share...see you there!

 

Troy

 

Here are some thoughts on the Mangafique blend this year.  We're trying a Cabernet "Left Bank" style Bordeaux blend.  They are cab & cab-franc heavy with smaller amounts of merlot and malbec.

 

We want about a 10oz sample (300 ml).  Here are the starting blends and volumes. The syringes will make it much faster to do the blending this year.

  

Blend #1 (pre-blending favorite)

70% Cabernet    210ml

20% Cab Franc    60ml

10% Merlot          30ml

0% Malbec

 

We'll compare that blend to 2 others and see which we like, and then refine.

 

Blend #2 (add Malbec back in)

70% Cabernet     210ml

15% CFranc         45ml

10% Merlot           30ml

5% Malbec           15ml

 

Blend #3 (Amp up the Merlot)

70% Cabernet      210ml

15% CFranc          45ml

15% Merlot            45ml

Cousin Blending Trials

The group met tonight to decide on a blend for our Cousins blend of Petite Sirah and Syrah.

 

The Petite Sirah alone is very fruity, but doesn't have much body, finish or nose.  The Syrah alone is thin, doesn't have much fruit, but has a nice nose and finish.  Combined they are the best of both: A nice nose, good fruit, a nice mouth feel and finish.  It's not an overly complicated wine, just a nice pleasant red wine that you want to drink.  It should drink very well young (our favorite kind!).

 

Earlier pre-blending trials had pointed us to 50/50 blend or better, heavier on the Petite Sirah side.  We tried various blends ranging from equal parts to 70% Petite Sirah.  With the 70/30 we lost the Syrah and  50/50 had the most Syrah flavor.  We ended up with 55% Petite Sirah and 45% Syrah.  We will bottle the Cousins on Monday at 6pm, washing bottles at noon.

 

We tried the Merlot, which we fined with egg whites a week ago.  Much of the astringency is gone and the wine is much improved.  It needs another week to settle out and then we'll do blending trials for the Bordeaux Blend (Magnafique) and Boisique.  We plan to do those trials on Thursday the 30th at 5pm and then bottle afterwards (again, washing bottles prior on Wednesday or Thursday at noon-TBD).

 

We have 25G of Petite Sirah.  That means we'll get 45.45G of Cousins, or 227 bottles (about 19 cases total-- 3.8 cases each).

 

2009 Cousins

20.45 G of Syrah

25.0 G of Petite Sirah

 

After bottling Cousins, we will have about 10G of Syrah left.  We'll blend it into some "Encore" with some Malbec, after we bottle the Magnafique and Boisique.

 

 

Merlot Fining

We decided to fine the Merlot with some egg whites to try and reduce the bitter tannins.  We stirred 2 egg-whites into the 30G barrel and will let it sit for 7-14 days and see how it changes. We left a 5G carboy alone, which we can use to compare the taste, which will be very interesting!    We will want to bottle or rack the merlot in 2 weeks so it doesn't sit on the sediment.

 

For reference, we used 2 farm-fresh eggs (2oz egg whites) and 4oz of a salt water solution  (1/2 tsp salt in 1C water).

 

 

 

2010 Season

The group met tonight to discuss the 2010 grapes and bottling of the 2009 wines.

 

The wine season is coming together, although we haven't been able to close the deal with Wood River for Merlot and Malbec--so we're starting to be concerned that those grapes might fall through.  As an alternative we will see if we can get some (#500?) Malbec or Merlot from Larry Kornze. It will be fewer pounds than we had planned, so we'll try and get some Tempranillo from Larry too--Ray thought he would have about 600# available.

 

Lee talked with Roger about some Syrah or Cabernet, and thought some would be available. With the late growing year we're going to go with earlier riping grapes and ask for 1,000-1,500# of Williamson Syrah and no Williamson Cabernet . That will give us some extra gallons for others who are trying winemaking with us (Tomlinson and OLeary).

 

Lee is going to take a bottle of our Petite Sirah Port out to Steve and Leslee at Robertson's and see if we might be able to glean some late Syrah for a port this year.  Our fingers are crossed for 300-400#.  If we can get it, we'll have to start looking for more fortifying spirits.

 

We're unsure about a white wine this year. Roger said he has some young Vioginer, which we think would be worth trying.  We're going to try for 500-1,000#.  Michele is interested in some Viognier. Kirk indicated he is interested in trying his hand, and some Viognier would be a good place to start.  It would be fun to go out and pick it ourselves, if we can.

 

We tasted the Merlot, which has been coming along but is still very bitter. A trial blend of 75% Merlot and 25% Malbec was promising--if we can just take the edge off of the Merlot.  We discussed fining the Merlot to reduce the astringency bitter tannins.  We think we'll try some egg whites, which is a proven gentle method, to help smooth out the Merlot.  We are meeting Monday morning at 11am to confirm how much to add and do the fining. We'll let the merlot sit for a couple weeks after adding the egg whites while we bottle the Cousins.  We tasted the 50/50 Cousins, which is good.  Adding a bit more Petite Sirah punches up the fruit. We need to settle on a final blend.  Blending trials is always something to look forward to!

 

Here is the count of gallons from the last racking. We'll be bottling everything but the WA Cab and a barrel of the ID Cab--which we'll hold over for a Reserve Cabernet.  That's about 250G - 60G = 190G of wine.  That's about 16 cases of bottles each.  (Note: we've already bottled the port).  Time to start cleaning bottles!  We should try and get some bottling done in September, while we have the manpower around.

 

From early trial blending I'm guessing we'll have

 

1. A "Left Bank" Cabernet style Bordeaux.  Blend TBD, starting with 70% Cab, 20% Franc, 10% Merlot

 

2. Boisique. 75/25% blend?

 

3. Cousins (around 70% PS 30%S)

 

4. Encore Syrah/Malbec ( Something like 75% Syrah, 25% Malbec--depending on other blends)

 

5. 60G Cab Reserves...to be bottled in the Spring.

 

 

Rough 2010 Wine Gallons

Willy's Cab      55 gal      

WA Cab          35 gal      
Cab Franc         5gal     
Merlot               35gal                      
Malbec             25 gal      
Syrah                30gal        
P.Syrah             25gal       

Cousins            15gal      
Port                   17gal       

 

Porto Bottled

Troy, Mike and Bob worked this afternoon for a couple of hours and got the Petite Sirah Porto bottled. It was just a 15G barrel, so it went quickly.  Mike had picked up some splits and our regular corks fit them.  Mike got both some green splits and some clear splits. The wine sure looks purdy in that clear glass with the sunshine on it.  :)  We talked about getting a new picture for the port label. Maybe a sunset shot over the river or pond. Something to make the bottle stand out.  Check out the photos online: http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010 

 

Interestingly after racking the wine and stirring it up, the alcohol/fire was more present than before.  Something about how the fortified wine stratifies in the barrel, I guess. We ended up with 34 splits each, plus a half dozen set aside for the growers and maybe a contest.  We're all pleased with how the Porto turned out--especially for our first Fortified wine.  We'll look for another opportunity to make some Port. We need to find a late harvest grape. Maybe we can glean some late Syrah this year???

 

We added about 15ppm meta to the wine before bottling--most of which will get blown off during the bottling process.  We couldn't quite remember how the hose set-up went to go from the barrel into the bottler. We ended up doing a step-down hose that worked, although it kept wanting to pop off of the barrel spigot.  We'll have to come up with a better mechanism.  Ray might remember what we did last time. 

 

The Porto barrel (Troy's 15G Hungarian) has been meta/citric rinsed and is drying in the garage.  We started hydrating the large 60G barrel for white wine fermentation. It's leaking pretty badly.  I smelled my empty 26G American barrel--everything smelled fine--and burned a bit more of a sulfur wick to hold it until the next crush is over.

Magnafique Pre Blending

Did a little pre-blending to get an idea of the Magnafique blend. We're shooting for a cab-focused blend with the Cab Franc vs. the Merlot style from last year.  In previous tastes we've liked 10-20% cab franc with the cab, so that's where I started.   My first try was to determine if the Malbec adds anything to the blend this year.  I did the following 2 blends

 

Blend 1
80% Cab
15% Cab Franc
5% Merlot
 
Blend 2
75% Cab
15% Cab Franc
5% Merlot
5% Malbec

 

Both blends were good but Blend #1 was nicer. The blend with the 5% Malbec had a peppery finish.  Mike and Margaret tasted and also liked Blend #1.

 

I tried dialing up the Merlot component in Blend 1 to more like 10% and that was too much, the merlot this year has a bitterness that threw off the balance.  I think Blend #1 is a good starting point. We can try adding more or less Cab Franc and see what the group likes.

 

Troy

Clarifying Racking Before Bottling

Since the day was cool, we started out around noon and finished around 5pm.  Greg from around the corner came by and was a great hand.  Here are the stats:

 

Willy's Cab   22G/30G/3G       55 gal       racked/meta'd @15ppm     found no problems

WA Cab        32G/3G                 35 gal       racked/meta'd @15ppm     found no problems

Cab Franc    5G                             5gal        racked/meta'd@15ppm      found no problems

Merlot            30G/5G                 35gal        racked/meta'd@15ppm      +5 gal carb suspect.  rack/meta &set aside                   

Malbec          18G/5G/1G/1G  25 gal        "                                    "              found no problems

Syrah             30G                        30gal         "                                   "               found no problems(topped w/P.Syrah)

P.Syrah          25G                        25gal        "                                   "               no problems

WE DID DISCARD SUSPECT 1 GAL. PETITE SYRAH DUE TO VERY HEAVY VINEGAR TASTE 

Cousins         15G                         15gal        "                                   "               no problems          

Port                 15G                          17gal        Tasted                                       No problems MAY BOTTLE ON WED.

 

NOTE:  WE NEED TO BE CAREFUL WHEN USING THE NEW STAINLESS PADDLE TO STIR WITH VIGOR.  WE CAN SHAVE PLASTIC OFF THE SIDE OF THE NEW BARREL WITH THE SPIGOT.   LOOKS LIKE LITTLE WHITE SHAVINGS IN THE WINE.   WE WILL LOOK AT SMOOTHING THE EDGES OF THE PADDLE TO SOLVE THIS.  MEANWHILE WE WILL STIR WITH CARE.

 

Let me know if I missed anything.  All the wine has been racked/meta'd and barrels rinsed and refilled.  All the wine looked good with very little dregs.  We did not save any dregs to cycle back in.  We decided to leave the wine as clean as we could with bottling coming up soon.  BETTER GET BUSY ON CLEANING THOSE BOTTLES.  CIAO!   Mike

 

 

Margaret Dimmick

dimmicks@earthlink.net

EarthLink Revolves Around You.

 

Aug 23rd TopnTaste Report

We met to check wines and talk about the Fall schedule. We celebrated a "Best Blend" award for Riverwoods and a Third Place for Best Cabernet with Michele and Tom!  Salute!  It was a busy busy night. Here's what I remember of it.

 

Troy

 

It's always so fun to taste the wines at the end of the summer. They've gone through their mid-life crisis and are entering a point where they're stable and ready to bottle.  This year's no different. All the wines are starting to shine!  Here are some notes from tonight's Top N Taste. 

• The Merlot continues to surprise us on how far it has come. It's still tannic but it tates like Merlot! Next step is to try the Boisique blend.
   
• The Petite Sirah has nice fruit and some barrel tannins on the finish. Simple, fruity and nice.
  
• The Syrah continues to be a bit thin but with a nice finish.
  
• The Cousins blend of Syrah and Petite Sirah is the best of both. Fruit, body and finish.  The barrel has a 50/50 blend and tonight we tried a step towards more p. sirah and liked it.  We need to do more blending but a 70% Petite Sirah 30% Sirah is tasting very promising.
   
• The Malbec continues to be smooth with loads of white pepper. We broke down a carboy for topping and it had a funky layer on top but was OK underneath. We took off the top bit and added some meta to it and to the barrel, which also had a slight surface film but smelled and tasted fine.
   
• The WA Cab was smooth and had a great nose. It had us thinking that maybe we should bottle cab early this year!?
   
• The ID Cab had good flavor and body, but less nose, although Ray's barrel had more vanilla nose from the French barrel.
   
• A few weeks ago the port had some oxidation and a VA smell. The smell has subsided and the port tastes great. We think we want to bottle it first to make sure we get it safely into a bottle. We want to add 10-15ppm meta when we bottle to help protect it.

We talked about a new barrel. Ray thinks we could use to get some newer wood. The oldest barrel is his 22G recoop French. The most neutral is Troy's 15 Hungarian or Lee's 15G French.  For size we could use something smaller like a 10 G.  We don't need the new wood this year (less cab) but will be looking to rotate in some new wood this year or next.

 

We need 1 more racking before we bottle for clarity.  We are going to rack this Monday Aug 30th for sure, and possibly Sunday Aug 29th as well. NOTE: We need to add 15ppm meta before we rack to get ready for bottling.  Add the meta after racking OUT of the barrels and before racking back IN.

  - 15PPM SO2

    - 1/4 tsp meta = 15ppm in 15 gal

    - 1/3 tsp meta = 15ppm in 20 gal

    - 1/2 tsp meta = 15ppm in 30 gal

Proposed bottling for the Port is the week of September 13th. We'll firm up a date as it gets closer.  Mike will check on splits for bottling. Troy will check on corks.

We need to do tasting trials for the magnafique, boisique and cousins blends in September.  People should also give some thought to if we want to bottle the cabernet NOW or hold it a few more months in the barrel.  This is a very good cab and can take some extra wood and it will make a great Reserve. But if we bottle it now we could take an extra 1,000lbs (60G) of wine this year.  We need to decide right away if we want to get more grapes to fill those barrels.

We reviewed grapes for 2010 and decided with the shorter growing year we wanted to go long on merlot and syrah and do less later ripening varietals like Cab and Petite Sirah.  We never know what we're going to get until it's in the barrels, but here's what we're going to try for:

Wood River-- Mike and Troy will follow up.

- 1,000 lbs of Merlot. Could take up to 1,500lbs.  (500 lbs confirmed so far).

- 1,000 lbs of Malbec.

 

Williamson -- Lee will follow up

- 250 lbs of Cab or Syrah

- 600 - 800 lbs.of Viognier

 

RiverRock

- 500 lbs of Clone 6 Cab

 

Hells Canyon -- Lee to follow up.

- Glean Syrah and Cab Franc

 

Periple -- Troy will confirm.

- 1,000 lbs of WA Syrah through Angie.

 

 

July 30th Topping Report

We topped up and tasted wines tonight.  Wines were down quite a bit. It's been 3 weeks since we topped last.  Wines are coming along well. Here are some notes from the tasting.

 

Troy

 

The merlot is starting to mellow. It's still a bit astringent and tannic but it has some fruit now. We all thought it was much improved.

 

The syrah is a bit thin and bland.

 

The petite sirah has a candied fruit flavor. Nice body. Clean finish.

 

The syrah/p.sirah blend was a nice combination. It had the fruit from the P. Sirah and the finish from the Syrah. Very promising.

 

A 1G carboy of Petite Sirah smelled and tasted off. We marked its suspect and hit it with a little meta.

 

The malbec continues to be very peppery with some green pepper.

 

Wa Clone 6 cab was OK, but somewhat shut down. Nothing bad, but the flavors aren't showing through right now.

 

The ID Williamson cab in Ray's 30G French barrel had a much bigger nose and flavor than the same cab in the 20G American barrel.

 

The Petite Sirah port had an off flavor and smell. We think it might be getting oxidized. The PH is higher on that wine so it requires more ppm of Meta so we added 15ppm. 

 

Temp in the big cooler was 72 degrees, which is warmer than we would like. We turned the temp down to the max level. We should check the temp in a few days. It's possible that the higher temps are causing the issue with the Petite Sirah and the port.  We didn't have a thermometer in the smaller cooler--we should put one in there to get a reading on temperatures.

 

We need to check Troy's empty barrel and resulfur it. We'll want to check and see if it needs to be hydrated (and then meta/citric rinsed) first.

 

Wines In The Cooler

I'm delinquent on updating the blog, so here it goes.

 

We finished racking wine off the fine lees over Memorial Day weekend and all the wines are in the cooler.  We ended up blending some syrah/petite-sirah into a barrel (50/50) as a base for the cousin's blend. We added 15-20ppm of meta to the wine after racking and stirred it in. The platypus topping wine got an extra pinch of meta.  We topped 2 weeks later, and all wines are cool and sound.   We need to top again by the end of June.

 

We had a guest at the winery while we racked: Mike from Syringa. It was nice to chat with him. He tasted several wines and was particularly impressed with the 09 Cabernets and the Petite Sirah Port (aren't we all!).

 

On Memorial Day we had Riverwoods BBQ with a vertical tasting of Boisique 2004-2008 (minus the extra popular, award winning 2006).  The wines are holding up very well. 2004 has aged well and was the favorite. The bottle had loads of sediment, but tasted great--it could have gone several more years.  The 2007 was noticeably more tannic. The 05 had more oak and the 08 had the most body (15% alcohol, baby!).  Now if we could just figure out how to hold onto more bottles of wine until they were 5 years old! ;)

 

We sulfured Troy's empty 26G American barrel. We'll have to check on it mid-summer to make sure it doesn't dry out.

Racking #1

We racked the Merlot, Malbec and WA Cab tonight.  We started to rack the Porto but it didn't have much fine lees because we've racked and stirred it extra times so we decided to leave it alone.

 

All the wines were sound with no sign of rotten egg smell. The Merlot is a different source this year and is much more tannic with less fruit.  The Malbec is dark, smooth and had lots of pepper, and the WA Clone 6 Cab is a nice, elegant cab flavor.

 

We added 15ppm of Meta as we racked plus an extra pinch in the platypus topping containers. 

 

We have 1 more racking to do (Planned for Memorial Day) for the ID Cab, Syrah and Petite Syrah, combining ID cab from carboys and a 15G barrel into Ray's 30G barrel and combining some syrah and petite sirah into a 15G barrel. Then everything can go into the cooler. 

 

We enjoyed a 2005 Boisique while we racked. The flavors were very good--it was holding up well after 5 years. The wine was a bit cloudy--we have certainly improved that aspect of the wine.

Racking Of Fine Lees

We met yesterday to discuss our plans to rack off the Fine Lees and get all the wine into the cooler. 

 

We need 2 or 3 racking sessions to get all the wine racked.  We went through schedules and tried to choose a couple days that might work. How does May 20th (Thursday/tomorrow) and Monday May 31 (Memorial day) work for people?  I would guess the racking Thursday would be in the afternoon.

 

We have 2 empty barrels that had the Cab Reserve that we want to fill with wine, if possible. Below is a list of how much wine we have in our barrels and carboys. Here is an option for combining wines to more into wood. I like getting the cabernet into Ray's 30G barrel because it's newer.

 

1. Free up Lee's 15G barrel by taking the 15G of ID Cab plus 15G of ID Cab in carboys and putting that into Ray's 30G barrel.

 

2. Combine 15G of Syrah and Petite Sirah and put it into Lee's 15G barrel (as a pre-blend for our Cousin's blend). I recommend 7.5G of each Syrah and Petite Sirah so we have a 50/50 blend. This leaves enough syrah and petite sirah for topping and makes blending math easier later.

 

This gets rid of five 5G carboys and leaves my 26G barrel empty.  We don't have enough of any other wine to combine to fill it, so we'll sulfur it and keep the rest in carboys.  I think we'll have enough space in the back part of the wall-side cooler to put away all the carboys.

 

If you have other suggestions, please reply-all.

 

Troy

 

We want a non-airitive racking now (ie: minimim splashing). When racking we need to add 15ppm of Meta--best to add after racking out and before racking back in so it gets mixed well. The barrels just need a fresh water rinse/drain unless there is an off smell or taste. We'll have to check the empty barrels before filling them. I think they got a meta rinse after bottling but I'm not sure.
    - 1/4 tsp meta = 15ppm in 15 gal
    - 1/3 tsp meta = 15ppm in 20 gal
    - 1/2 tsp meta = 15ppm in 30 gal

 

Order of Racking (initial, can change. Could reverse what is racked on which day)

May 20th:

1. Merlot

2. Malbec

3. WA Cab

4. Porto

 

Memorial Day

1. ID Cab barrels and carboys (including filling Ray's 30G barrel)

2. Syrah

3. Petite Sirah

4. Combining leftover Syrah and Petite Sirah into a 50/50 blend in Lee's 15G barrel

 

 

Carboy Size	Wine	TTL		Barrel	Size	Wine	TTL		Combined Wine	TTL Gal
5	CabFranc	5		Troy A	26	Empty	0		CabFranc	5
1	ID Cab			Ray F	30	Empty	0		ID Cab	58
5	ID Cab			Ray F	22	ID Cab			Malbec	23
5	ID Cab			Lee F	15	ID Cab	37		Merlot	41
5	ID Cab			Bob A	15	Malbec	15		P Sirah	33
5	ID Cab	21		Mike H	30	Merlot	30		Porto	18
5	Malbec			Bob F	20	P Sirah	20		Syrah	40
3	Malbec	8		Troy H	15	Porto	15		WA Cab	35
5	Merlot			Mike H	30	Syrah	30
5	Merlot			Lee F	30	WA Cab	30
1	Merlot	11
1	P Sirah
1	P Sirah
5	P Sirah
5	P Sirah
1	P Sirah	13
3	Porto	3
5	Syrah
5	Syrah	10
5	WA Cab	5