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.
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