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.