winery work on 12/23/08

Today we racked the WA Malbec over copper plate twice and added approx. 1/3 tsp. Meta to approx 19 gals.    It has a strong rotten egg smell, although Ray and Bob don't think it was as bad as the Sangio. 

 

Sangio smells OK and tastes a little tart, almost lemony/grassy.  We did not rack it any more.

 

We racked the SS 15.5 gal of Chard.  Tastes great! 

 

We topped the rest of the barrels. They all smell good. 

 

 

topping report

At 1pm today (12/10/08) Bob, Lee and Mike checked all the containers/barrels and topped the Malbec and Chard. 

 

The Chard (stainless steel keg) smells great, tastes good (could use a touch of wood) and containers are good to go.  We racked the 3 gal carboy and got rid of about a 1/2 gallon of goop in the bottom.  jTasted the 3 gal carboy and it is the same good taste as the stainless keg.

 

The Washington Malbec smells strong of rotten egg.  The barrel was down about 2 bottles.  Need to rack it over copper soon.  (did not smell the carboy of Wa/Malbec.  (Sorry)

 

The Idaho Malbec smells great, tastes great and has been topped (about 3/4 a bottle)

 

The bungs, bubblers and corks are looking good in everything else.  We did open one barrel of 08 cab and the level has not dropped since we racked on Sunday 9/07/08, so we left the other recently racked containers alone. 

 

Empty barrel smells really good.

 

One barrel that appeared to be slightly leaking still shows a stain, and I was able to feel about a drop of wet red wine on my finger after I ran it around the head, but it seems to be OK.  Maybe it has swollen and sealed itself. 

 

Bungs that were removed were meta'd and returned. 

 

I'll send an e-mail to Quality Nursery to inform David of the rotten egg smell in his Malbec. 

 

That's it!       Mike

 

 

Margaret Dimmick

dimmicks@earthlink.net

 

 

Cab & Malbec Racked Off The Gross Lees

The group met and racked the barrels of Merlot and Cabernet off their gross lees today. We spot checked the sugars and the merlot was down to .994 and the cab was at .996. Both down a little since we pressed, but could use to drop a little further.  The cab had considerable sediment on the bottom and we lost 2 gallons or so in each barrel.   Troy's 15G Hungarian was emptied out while racking the cab, and needs a meta rinse.  It will stay empty until the Sangio is ready.

 

We re-racked the sangio over copper again. The sangio continues to smell better. The stainless kegs that have been racked once more than the others had very little to no rotten egg smell!  We are delighted to be rid of the nasty smell and we plan to filter the sangio in the next week or so to (hopefully) keep it from coming back.  Some of the sangio still had considerable gunky-ness settled to the bottom as the precipitants have been coming out from adding extra meta and racking over the copper.  We've been aggressivly discarding any sediment when we rack.

 

We plan to keep the sangio in stainless kegs and glass until we are sure it is "sound", so that it doesn't contaminate a barrel. Once we're confident it is good (a couple weeks after filtering) we'll combine it with some of the cabernet to make the base of the Super Tuscan.  We tried some blending today and about a 60% cabernet and 40% sangio was good. Could use a shot of Petit Verdot too.  I think the first Super Tuscan had approx 10% petit verdot.

 

The group reviewed the Fall expenses and Troy will finish the accounting and get the results out to the group.  This year we crushed 5,800 pounds of grapes, compared to 4,100 pounds last year. Both this year and last year we had 6 crushings and 5 pressings.  We pressed out 376 gallons of wine this year!

 

The group decided to create a new category of capital equipment called "Group Capital" that we split the cost of evenly. New items for the category are microbins and the new bottler. We decided to not go back and try and account for previous items, but just keep track of new items from here forward.