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.