Racking

We racked the ID Syrah off the Gross Lees today. It has some rotten egg smell so we added 20ppm meta and racked it back into the barrel over copper

 

We racked the ID Cab off the Gross Lees. It smells great.

 

The Malbec is better, but still smells. We added 20ppm meta and racked it out/in over copper.

 

We found that the 15G Hungarian barrel had WA Cab in it....still on the gross lees. Ooops.  We racked it and added 20ppm meta. No problems detected.

 

We still need to rack the Merlot off the Gross lees, sometime in the next 2 weeks.  The Syrah and Malbec need to be checked in a couple weeks and racked again.

 

All barrels were topped.

 

Possibly Low SO2 in WA Cab

Bill's group that got Dennis' Sangio grapes and Larry's red-grape blend did some testing at WineWise. I thought the results were worth passing along.

 

The pH was about what we expected, but the SO2 levels were much lower than expected.  I expected about 15ppm and they had 4ppm.  What I think happened is that their 60G barrel was down 5 gallons while they waited for Larry's wine to ferment. During that time they had more air exposure, which drained down the SO2 level.

 

One reason I bring this up, is because we experienced the same thing in our WA Cabernet. We found the barrel down considerably when we went to rack it off the gross lees (it sat for over a month this way).  I expect that this means we also burned extra SO2 and are down close to zero.  I recommend we add some meta to the WA Cabernet.  If we want, we can have WineWise measure the SO2 levels (for  $ 13), or we can just add 10-15ppm to the wine (remembering that only 1/2 of that makes it into Free SO2).

 

Troy

 

 

Sample # 1		Result:		Date:		Method:
2010 Sangiovese
pH		3.14		12/15/2010		ph probe
Free SO2	<5		mg/L (ppm)		12/15/2010		Auto Titrator
4.03				mg/L (ppm)
Sample #2
2010 Grenache
pH		3.46		12/15/2010		ph probe

Last Pressing

The ID Malbec finally dropped below 0 brix and we pressed it Merlot today.  We pressed moderately hard and got about 21 gallons. It's resting in a SS Keg and carboys until we have an open barrel from bottling the Cab reserve.  The Merlot had been on the skins for about a month and picked up quite a bit of skins/seeds tannins.  It took a long time to ferment because of the cool temperatures.

 

We racked the ID Malbec off the gross lees.  It had a very bad rotten egg smell (HSO2) so we added 20ppm sulfites and racked it over copper flashing in and out of the barrel.  That helped the smell some, but we'll need to rack it again in 2 - 3 weeks to get it off of the precipitants.

 

We also racked the WA Cab off the gross lees. It had been sitting for quite awhile finishing fermentation, as we pressed it with some sugar left.  We were surprised to see the barrel down a good 3 inches. We didn't realize it was that far down.  The taste in the barrel was OK, but not as much fruit as a carboy.

 

We still have the ID Syrah, Cab and Merlot to rack off the gross lees, and we need to rack the Malbec again.

 

Idaho Cab Pressed

We pressed the Williamson Cabernet today.  Flavors and color are great. We are very pleased with how it turned out.

We pressed pretty hard and got almost 19 gallons from 27G of must (about a 70% yield).  It was a small batch and went very quickly.

Wine is in Lee's recooped Demtos barrel plus a 3G carboy and platypus.  

Pictures are updated in Picasa  http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010 

ID Cab Ready To Press

The Williamson Cabernet has dropped below 0 brix (0.998 specific gravity), after fermenting for 25 days (31 days on the skins, including the cold soak).  Flavor and color are excellent and it's time to press it.  It's a small batch (26G of must) so it will go quickly.  The cab will go into Lee's re-cooped Demtos barrel plus a few carboys.

The ID Merlot is still fermenting slowly. It is at 4.5 brix and 65 degrees. It will take another week to finish fermenting. It was crushed on Nov 13th, so it has been on the skins for 3 weeks so far.  We are tentatively set for the following Sunday, Dec 12th, to press the merlot.  The merlot will go into a SS keg until we bottle the 2009 reserve cab.

Because of the late harvest and cold temperatures this year we have had to put warm water bottles in the must and wrap the fermentation containers with blankets and run a garage heater to keep them warm enough to ferment.  We are avoiding pressing before they are done fermenting to ensure that they don't get stuck with some residual sugar.  The WA Cab (which was pressed early because of green seeds) has taken a month to drop the last few brix. It is at zero, but still bubbling slightly.  

The platypus containers with Malbec and WA Cab had quite a bit of gas build-up in them, showing they are still fermenting some.  We vented the excess gas and you can really smell the HSO2 on the Malbec. We need to rack it off the gross lees in another week and should consider running it over the copper flashing.  The ID Syrah and WA Cab also need to be racked off the gross lees.