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?