Syrah 2011 (resending to blog)

Today, we innoculated our 2011 Red Heaven Syrah.  We estimated 1134 #s fruit = 108 gal must in the 43" macrobin = 70 gallons juice.  The wild yeast was very active, so it appears we did not put enough Meta into the must on Saturday, the day after we received the container.  Angie had added 20 ppm and Ray and Mike added approx 20ppm more.  After confering with other pros, we decided to go ahead and add Red Pasteur yeast due to the high brix possibly being too high for the wild yeast to handle.  (4 Tablespoons) along with nutrient.   TA was .49, so we added 1 lb. of Tartaric Acid to bring the TA up to near 7.  The PH for Angies container with 27 brix was 3.78 so we assumed the same for ours.  We need to closely monitor the temp of the must and punch it down several times per day.  We have ice ready to keep the temps down. 

 

We need to get some supplies for the PH meter (base solution) and find our thief.  We used 8 pkgs yeast leaving us with 7.  I ordered 15 more from Brewcon, but have not heard back yet.  Mike

 

 

 

2010 Boisique Bottled

We bottled 52G of Boisique.  We tweaked the blend slightly from the tasting. Final blend ended up being:

 

50% WA Merlot

35% ID Merlot

15% Malbec

 

We tried blends using both barrels of Merlot and went with Troy's older American oak barrel. The WA Merlot that had been in Ray's new barrel had an off taste in the finish. We will use that merlot in our Bordeaux blend. 

 

Magnafique tasting trials are set for the evening of Wed Oct 5th. Starting blend for the 2010 Magnafique Bordeaux Blend will be as follows. We expect about 60G of Bordeaux blend, which is 300 bottles. Everyone needs 5 cases of clean shouldered bottles.

 

Magnafique Trial Blends

 

Blend 1

50% WA Merlot

40% WA Cab

10% Malbec

 

Blend 2

60% WA Merlot

35% WA Cab

5% Malbec

 

We want to bottle the Williamson cab as straight cab, unless we find we need it in the Bordeaux Blend. That is 75 shouldered bottles.

 

We discovered that we have 30G of WA Syrah to bottle, and not 30G of Idaho Syrah. That is 150 bottles of non-shouldered bottles.

 

We will bottle the leftover gallons of cab and malbec as our 2010 encore, which will be about 50/50 blend of WA Cab and Malbec (est 20-25G or 125 bottles).

 

 

Re: [Riverwoods Wineries] 2010 Boisique

Sorry--this sent before I was done.  Additional edits below.

 

Troy

The group met last night to decide our Boisique blend.  As always, it was an interesting blending event.  We ended up liking a blend of 85% Merlot and 15% Malbec the best, with the Merlot being a 50/50 blend of the ID Merlot and WA Merlot.

 

The ID Merlot added some surprising flavors of candied raspberries which was too strong by itself, but was a nice addition when blended in with the WA Merlot.  Ray thought the flavor could be dialed down a little bit more (ie: more WA Merlot than ID), and we tried reducing it by 50%, which was too much.

 

Looking at the gallons of merlot in the cellar, we have an 18G of ID merlot, plus 1+G in carboys and topping. So we have an easy option to try a slightly higher blend of WA Merlot (we would need to taste this first, the blend ratio is below), or we can hold the additional 11G of WA Merlot in Carboys for future blending. 

 

Given the good results of blending the ID + WA Merlot together for the Boisique we should probably do some quick blends of the ID and WA Syrah to see if we like that.  Blending multiple sources can often add complexity to the wine. We could consider doing 1 30G barrel of 100% WA Syrah and the second blended with ID and WA Syrah.  Something worth considering.

 

We are starting bottling the week of the 18th. Washing bottles mid-day on Monday the 19th and bottling the WA Syrah Wednesday evening Sept 21st. Repeating the following Mon and Wed for the Boisique.  We need 25 cases of non-shouldered bottles for the Syrah and 25 shouldered bottles for the Boisique.

 

We still have trial blending to do for a Bordeaux/Magnafique blend and an Encore.

 

Here is the blend with 50/50 ID/WA Merlot (3.75 cases each).

 

45G of Boisique

19G of ID Merlot   42.5%

19G of WA Merlot  42.5

6.75G of Malbec   15%

 

Here is the blend, using the full barrel of WA Merlot, (4.8 cases each).

 

57.5G of Boisique

19G of ID Merlot (33%)

30G of WA Merlot (52%)

8.5G of Malbec (15%)

 

2010 Boisique

The group met last night to decide our Boisique blend.  As always, it was an interesting blending event.  We ended up liking a blend of 85% Merlot and 15% Malbec the best, with the Merlot being a 50/50 blend of the ID Merlot and WA Merlot.

 

The ID Merlot added some surprising flavors of candied raspberries which was too strong by itself, but was a nice addition when blended in with the WA Merlot.

 

Ray thought the flavor could be dialed down a little bit more (ie: more WA Merlot than ID), and we tried reducing it by 50%, which was too much.

 

Looking at the gallons of merlot in the cellar, we have an 18G of ID merlot, plus 1+G in carboys and topping. So we have an easy option to try a slightly higher blend of WA Merlot, or we can hold the additional 11G of WA Merlot in Carboys for future blending.

 

Here is the blend with 50/50 ID/WA Merlot

 

45G of Boisique

19G of ID Merlot   25%

19G of WA Merlot 

6.75G of Malbec   15%

Recent Winery Activities

My home computer has been down, so I haven't sent blog entries in for awhile. Here is a quick synopsis of recent activities.

 

When topping last week, Ray was concerned that the Merlot in his French Oak barrel was getting too much wood. Part of that is his newer barrel that had a raw lumber taste. We have the option to move that barrel of Merlot to Mike's empty 30G hungarian barrel. If we do that we would want to move the WA Cab from the suspect barrel into Ray's French Oak barrel, which is still pretty new and has good oak. Then we can decide what to do with that suspect barrel.

 

If we decide to transfer the wines then we first need to hydrate and clean the empty barrel with proxycarb (should just need a light cleaning get rid of sulfur). It is important that we don't let the barrel sit out wet for days or it will also get some mold growth inside.  The wines are at minimum SO2 levels right now, so we need to add 15ppm before transferring/racking them.

 

Troy

 

1. Bottling 2009 Cabs

We bottled the 2009 cabernets in early June. The reserve cab blend is very good. The WA cab has a funny taste--we think it may have gotten some spoilage. Our only guess is the SS kegs we transferred it into for the last 2 months must have not been completely clean and the SO2 levels were too low.  There is some WA cab i the reserve blend. Hopefully it doesn't cause problems. The blend ended up being:

 

2009 Reserve Cab
65% ID Cab
25% WA Cab
10% Malbec

 

2. Topping

We have been topping every 2 weeks. Last date was Aug 6th. All wines are sound and have turned the corner and tasting quite good. The WA Merlot and WA Syrah are excellent as is the ID Williamson Cabernet. The others are tasting fine, just not as good.  pping wines tasted suspect. We're not sure what--maybe too high of sulfites added? We marked it as "Suspect" on the container and topped with something else.   The wine cooler is working well.

 

3. Racking

We racked all wines (except the Syrah) off the fine lees in early to mid June.  We decided to not do the additional racking on the syrah based on input from Angie who said while racking and aeration is beneficial to bordeaux grapes, syrah is better to rack less.  The empty barrels were sulfured.

 

BARREL CLEANING PROCEDURE
1. Create a proxycarb solution (15 TBSP Proxy Clean for a 30G) into a 5G carboy and mix it up well.
 
2. Add proxycarb solution and water to fill the barrel. Turn on barrel turner to mix it up.
 
3. Let barrel sit for 24 hours
 
4. Rinse barrel with water
 
5. Rinse barrel with meta/citric solution (1G water, 1 TBSP Meta, 1/2 TBSP citric acid)
 
6. Rinse barrel with water

 

 

 

 

09 Cab Blending

An excellent night of blending that demonstrated the value of trial blending.  We tried 8 blends and found 2 that we are very happy with. It is amazing how changing the blend by just a few percent makes all the difference--even when you are cross blending 2 cabernets together.

 

The final blends:

 

2009 Riverwoods Cabernet Reserve

- 65% ID Clone 2 Cabernet

- 25% WA Clone 6 Cabernet

- 10% ID Malbec

 

2009 Riverwoods Washington Cabernet

- 95% WA Clone 6 Cabernet

- 5% ID Malbec (+/- a percent or two)

 

We can play around with the malbec +/- 2% as we blend the WA Cabernet, to see if we like it better.  We liked 5% malbec but didn't like 10% malbec.  In past cab reserve blends we have had 2.5%, 5% and 7% malbec.

 

 

Racking and Juggling

I expect we will want to add some (5% or so) of the 2010 Malbec to the 09 Cab Reserve.  Since we don't have any "extra" malbec in carboys, we will have to do some juggling to get it out, which we can work into our Spring racking. 

 

Here's the proposed shell game (current wine/barrel listing is at the end of the email). 

 

Troy

 

1. Move 30G WA Merlot from Ray's new American Oak Barrel into Ray's empty 30G French barrel. 

- Mike has cleaned this barrel and it is ready to go.

- We may want to rack out both barrels of WA Merlot at the same time and mix them together.

- We only have 1 extra G of WA Merlot...we may have to top with ID Merlot.

 

2. Combine 2 smaller barrels of WA Cab into Ray's new 30G American

- Clean Ray's barrel good beforehand

- 22G French + 15G Hungarian

 

3. Transfer the Malbec from a 30G Hungarian barrel into a 22G French Barrel (~3-4G will go into the blend).

 

4. Rack the ID Cab in/out of Lee's 15G barrel. We will have to top with WA Cab.

 

5. Rack the ID Merlot in/out of it's current barrel.

 

6. We need to decide if we want to rack the Syrah wines or not.  New information from Angie suggests it is better for Syrah to rack it less often.

 

 
 
Cooler #1:
1. 30G Hungarian, 2010 ID Syrah
2. 22G French, 2010 WA Cabernet
3. 22G French, 2010 WA Syrah
4. 15-18G American, 2010 Idaho Merlot
 
Cooler #2:
1. 15G Hungarian, 2010 WA Cabernet
2. 15G French, 2010 ID Cabernet
3. 15G Stainless, 2009 WA Cabernet
4. 15G Stainless, 2009 ID Cabernet

 
Carboys:
- (1+ 3+5) 9G 2010 WA Syrah
- 3G  2010 ID Merlot
- (5+1+ 5+1) 12G 2009 ID Cabernet
- 1G 2010 WA Merlot
- 3G ID Syrah
 
Cooler #3:
1. 30G French, 2010 WA Syrah
2. 30G Hungarian, 2010 Malbec
3. 26G American, 2010 WA Merlot
4. 30G American, 2010 WA Merlot

5. 15G Stainless, 2009 WA Cab w/ 1G ID Cab (outside cooler #3)

Preparing For Bottling

Today we cleaned 27 cases of bottles, preparing to bottle the 09 cabernet, including some magnums that Bob brought.  Took us about 3 hours.  We tried using one-step this time and liked it.  We think it has some sanatizing properties if the bottles soak for a couple of minutes...although it still isn't clear.  We got some  little sponges and ran them through the large siphon line and the bottling hose, using water pressure. We liked how that worked to clean out the lines.  And we soaked the bottler in a bucket of one-step, so it is ready to go (we will still want to do a quick meta rinse).

 

Blending trials are set for Wed at 6:30pm followed by bottling on Thu at 5:30pm.  This time we're going to pull barrel samples a couple of hours ahead of time so they have time to warm up before blending.  Each of the small carafes holds about 2 cups, or 500ml.  We will probably need 2 full carafes each of the ID and WA cabs plus 1 carafe of the Malbec

 

Inventory of wine in the garage is listed below. I counted fewer gallons of the 2009 wine than expected.  I expected about 60 gallons of 2009 wine and found only 32 gallons (15G of WA Cab and 17G of ID Cab), so I must have missed some. I will go back and double check. Maybe there is another stainless keg with combined 2009 ID/WA cab?  I did double check the corks and we have 300-400 corks, which will be enough.

 

We are tight on extra gallons of some of the 2010 wines, which we need to think about for racking. No extra Malbec and only 1G of WA Merlot (I didn't count any wine in Platypus containers).  We will have to figure out a racking plan.

 

 

Cooler #1:

1. 30G Hungarian, 2010 ID Syrah

2. 22G French, 2010 WA Cabernet

3. 22G French, 2010 WA Syrah

4. 15-18G American, 2010 Idaho Merlot

 

Cooler #2:

1. 15G Hungarian, 2010 WA Cabernet

2. 15G French, 2010 ID Cabernet

3. 15G Stainless, 2009 WA Cabernet

4. 15G Stainless, 2009 ID Cabernet

 

Carboys:

- (1+ 3+5) 9G 2010 WA Syrah

- 3G  2010 ID Merlot

- (5+1+ 5+1) 12G 2009 ID Cabernet

- 1G 2010 WA Merlot

- 3G ID Syrah

 

Cooler #3:

1. 30G French, 2010 WA Syrah

2. 30G Hungarian, 2010 Malbec

3. 26G American, 2010 WA Merlot

4. 30G American, 2010 WA Merlot

 

 

Re: [Riverwoods Wineries] Top and Taste

Clarification. The below statement is in reference to the initial sulfur addition made to sanitize the must before fermentation.

 

> 5. We would like to try changing our sulfur addition from 100ppm to 50ppm on one barrel of wine next year,

> to see what difference it makes. We will have to measure sulfur levels a couple of times in Nov/Dec and Jan

> to see when they drop below 15ppm and then start adding meta early to maintain that level.

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 7:25 AM, Troy Pearse <ttpearse@gmail.com> wrote:

We tasted and topped all the wines on Monday. All wines are coming along well.   The 2 favorites were the WA Merlot in Troy's barrel and the ID Cab in Lee's barrel.

 

The wine appears mostly through MLF, with a couple of barrels still having a tart taste. Another couple weeks and they will be ready to rack off the fine lees.  One barrel (the 20G barrel in the main cooler) of the WA Syrah had a slight off/chemical nose and we added 20ppm of meta to it. We should watch it carefully and clean the barrel well when we rack it off the fine lees next month.

 

The WA Merlot in Ray's barrel doesn't have quite as strong of a lumber taste/smell, but it still isn't as nice as what is in the other barrel. When we rack off the fine lees in 2 weeks we will transfer it to Ray's empty 30G barrel.

 

The WA Cab has good flavors, but is "weaker" this year. We will rotate it into Ray's new barrel, after pulling out the WA Merlot (and cleaning the barrel good with Proxycarb).

 

Trial blending for the 2009 cabernet reserve is set for Tuesday, May 31st, after Bob and Pam get back from their travels, with bottling the next day, Wed June 1st.  We estimate 5 cases of bottles each (get your bottles ready).  This is the second trial blending for the 09 cab reserve and we will be trying blending in some malbec and merlot, as well as making sure the samples are at room temperature.  We will start off the blending with the 2 front-runners from last time.

 

1. 60% WA Cab, 40% ID Cab

2. 60% ID Cab, 40% WA Cab

3. Add 5% Malbec to favorite of #1 vs #2

4. Add 5% Merlot to favorite of #1/#2/#3

 

We discussed some winery sanitation. Copys of the handouts from the seminar are in the winery for everyone and notes have been distributed electronically. A few items we talked about were:

 

1. Scrub around bung-holes with a strong meta solution before topping and clean bungs better.

 

2. Clean barrels with percarbonate (proxycarb) at the end of the season before letting them dry and sulfuring them. (Rinsing at racking is fine unless there is problem in the wine or barrel).

 

3. Clean hoses by soaking in a cleaner like proxycarb or One-step and running sponges/pigs through them.

 

4. Straight-A is a cleaner, but not a sanitizer. We could switch to One-step for winery equipment cleaning in the red bucket and it will clean and sanitize with 2 minutes of contact time.

 

5. We would like to try changing our sulfur addition from 100ppm to 50ppm on one barrel of wine next year, to see what difference it makes. We will have to measure sulfur levels a couple of times in Nov/Dec and Jan to see when they drop below 15ppm and then start adding meta early to maintain that level.

 

 

--
Posted By Troy Pearse to Riverwoods Wineries at 5/10/2011 06:25:00 AM

Top and Taste

We tasted and topped all the wines on Monday. All wines are coming along well.   The 2 favorites were the WA Merlot in Troy's barrel and the ID Cab in Lee's barrel.

 

The wine appears mostly through MLF, with a couple of barrels still having a tart taste. Another couple weeks and they will be ready to rack off the fine lees.  One barrel (the 20G barrel in the main cooler) of the WA Syrah had a slight off/chemical nose and we added 20ppm of meta to it. We should watch it carefully and clean the barrel well when we rack it off the fine lees next month.

 

The WA Merlot in Ray's barrel doesn't have quite as strong of a lumber taste/smell, but it still isn't as nice as what is in the other barrel. When we rack off the fine lees in 2 weeks we will transfer it to Ray's empty 30G barrel.

 

The WA Cab has good flavors, but is "weaker" this year. We will rotate it into Ray's new barrel, after pulling out the WA Merlot (and cleaning the barrel good with Proxycarb).

 

Trial blending for the 2009 cabernet reserve is set for Tuesday, May 31st, after Bob and Pam get back from their travels, with bottling the next day, Wed June 1st.  We estimate 5 cases of bottles each (get your bottles ready).  This is the second trial blending for the 09 cab reserve and we will be trying blending in some malbec and merlot, as well as making sure the samples are at room temperature.  We will start off the blending with the 2 front-runners from last time.

 

1. 60% WA Cab, 40% ID Cab

2. 60% ID Cab, 40% WA Cab

3. Add 5% Malbec to favorite of #1 vs #2

4. Add 5% Merlot to favorite of #1/#2/#3

 

We discussed some winery sanitation. Copys of the handouts from the seminar are in the winery for everyone and notes have been distributed electronically. A few items we talked about were:

 

1. Scrub around bung-holes with a strong meta solution before topping and clean bungs better.

 

2. Clean barrels with percarbonate (proxycarb) at the end of the season before letting them dry and sulfuring them. (Rinsing at racking is fine unless there is problem in the wine or barrel).

 

3. Clean hoses by soaking in a cleaner like proxycarb or One-step and running sponges/pigs through them.

 

4. Straight-A is a cleaner, but not a sanitizer. We could switch to One-step for winery equipment cleaning in the red bucket and it will clean and sanitize with 2 minutes of contact time.

 

5. We would like to try changing our sulfur addition from 100ppm to 50ppm on one barrel of wine next year, to see what difference it makes. We will have to measure sulfur levels a couple of times in Nov/Dec and Jan to see when they drop below 15ppm and then start adding meta early to maintain that level.

 

 

Malic Acid Numbers

We got results back from WineWise on the amount of Malic Acid in the WA Syrah.

 

The initial reading was 3.41 g/L, and the new reading was down to 2.45 g/L. So MLF had definitely started, but it wasn't on track to complete.  Adding the ML Cultures will ensure we get complete MLF.

 

It was interesting and encouraging that we could taste the difference between the wine that had started MLF (from being in the barrel) and the wine that hadn't started MLF (from being in SS).  It confirms our thoughts that MLF improves the red wines, especially in years like 2010 when we have higher malic acid levels because of the growing season.

 

Troy

b

On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Troy Pearse  wrote:

Mike ordered Wyeast liquid ML Cultures from Nampa Brewers and we added them to the 2010 red wines today at the rate of 1pkg per 15G, including carboys and platypus containers.  We expect MLF will take a month, maybe 6 weeks.

 

We smelled and tasted wines. All were sound with no rotten egg or other problems.  The favorite wines were the WA Syrah followed by the WA Merlot, although we didn't taste either of the cabs.

 

A couple of notes:

 

1. The Merlot in Ray's newest barrel continues to get a "lumber" taste (we noticed it last month as well). It is not a good oak taste. We think we want to move the after MLF into the empty 30G barrel (Troy will order more sodium percarbonate). We will clean and dry the barrel and see what we can do to improve it.  We tasted the same wine in another barrel, and there was a significant difference (better).

 

2. The WA Syrah that has been in the barrel the longest has a dramatically reduced tartness to it. We think MLF has been happening from residual ML cultures.  We took a sample to run to WineWise to measure the amount Malic Acid, which Angie had reported as 3.41 at crush time (high).  We tasted the same wine from another barrel, which had been in SS until 3 weeks ago. That sample was much tarter, which supports our hypothesis that MLF is happening in the barrels that have been used in the past.

 

Troy and Mike are going to sign up for the Idaho Wine Council's seminar in late April.  It will be interesting to learn how bigger wineries do sanitation.

 

 

MLF Added

Mike ordered Wyeast liquid ML Cultures from Nampa Brewers and we added them to the 2010 red wines today at the rate of 1pkg per 15G, including carboys and platypus containers.  We expect MLF will take a month, maybe 6 weeks.

 

We smelled and tasted wines. All were sound with no rotten egg or other problems.  The favorite wines were the WA Syrah followed by the WA Merlot, although we didn't taste either of the cabs.

 

A couple of notes:

 

1. The Merlot in Ray's newest barrel continues to get a "lumber" taste (we noticed it last month as well). It is not a good oak taste. We think we want to move the after MLF into the empty 30G barrel (Troy will order more sodium percarbonate). We will clean and dry the barrel and see what we can do to improve it.  We tasted the same wine in another barrel, and there was a significant difference (better).

 

2. The WA Syrah that has been in the barrel the longest has a dramatically reduced tartness to it. We think MLF has been happening from residual ML cultures.  We took a sample to run to WineWise to measure the amount Malic Acid, which Angie had reported as 3.41 at crush time (high).  We tasted the same wine from another barrel, which had been in SS until 3 weeks ago. That sample was much tarter, which supports our hypothesis that MLF is happening in the barrels that have been used in the past.

 

Troy and Mike are going to sign up for the Idaho Wine Council's seminar in late April.  It will be interesting to learn how bigger wineries do sanitation.

 

 

2009 Cab moved off wood

3/6/11: We moved the 2009 reserve cab off wood into stainless and glass. We will blend it with a little 2009 malbec and/or merlot in April.  We added 15ppm of meta to offset oxidation from racking.  Lee's 30G French barrel is rinsed and drying.  It needs to be sulfured after drying for a week.

 

We combined a smaller barrel and SS Keg of WA Syrah and put it into Ray's newest American oak barrel and then moved the ID Merlot from SS and glass into the small wood barrel.  We made a point of transferring some sediment/lees for MLF food.  We need to order ML cultures and get that started.  We could use a couple more of the larger "red top" breathable bungs.

 

We topped and checked all wines. All the wines are sound with no sign of HSO2. 

Travel Shock Experiment

There have been numerous discussions in the wine-world about "Travel Shock" impacting the flavor of a wine when it is shipped to you.  Many people recommend waiting several weeks after receiving a wine to allow it to recover.  Individuals in our group have had similar experiences where wine that they drove to a friend's house (many miles) didn't "taste right" to them, so we decided to run a test to see if we could detect travel shock in a bottle of wine. 

 

We took 2 identical bottles of 2009 Encore wine and exposed one to travel shock and left the other one alone. Prior to the experiment, both bottles had been stored exactly the same. The "Travel Shock" bottle then rode to Lewiston (300 miles) on a paved curvy road. It sat outside for a day in near freezing temperatures (while it's owner fished!), and then was driven a couple more hours and taken inside a warm house where it sat for 2 days.  It then drove 270 miles home and was sat upright next to the control-bottle for 66 hours inside a house. Both bottles were opened for an hour and then blind poured to be compared. 

 

Both wines drank just fine and people generally felt they were the same wine. There were some minor differences noted by some for flavor or smell, but nothing consistent or very significant. 

 

Possible Conclusions:

 

1. Travel shock is not real.

2. 66 hours was enough time to recover from travel shock.

3. The type of wine was not susceptible to travel shock, such as no sediment, not aged, not tannic.

 

Based on this limited result we think drinking wine that has been shipped is "safe" after 3 days.  We may look for other opportunities to try similar experiments in the future.

 

Fwd: Bottles and blending

Forwarding white blending/bottling info from Mike.  I will add $100 paid by Lee to this year's expenses for the Riesling.

 

Troy

 

-----

A gorgeous day!  In about 2 hours, we washed up about 18 cases of non-shouldered bottles in prep for bottling the whites tomorrow starting around noon.  Washing didn't take long due to good precleaning.  Thanks to all of us for doing a better job. 

 

We tried the Reisling and Viogner.  The Reisling has a slight nose of peach, soft finish.  It is Ok by itself.  The Viogner is a cool site Viogner and has little nose; a bit of a tart start with a nice grapefruit finish.  It will go nicely with food.   After tasting 75/25% (both ways) and 50/50% blends, we decided all three blends have merit.  We decided to blend 10 gals each of Reisling/Viogner for 20 gallons of 50/50 blend; 5 gal of Reisling by itself (this one carboy is a bit fizzy)  and 15 gallons of Viogner by itself.   We dumped the container of Reisling marked NO.  It had a bad nose and very poor taste.  We should end up with about 3+ cases of white wine each.  We do need to discuss settling up on the Reisling.  We think Lee purchased it along, since none of the rest of us remember ponying up any $$ to contribute. 

 

We will move the Cabernet into SS and glass within the next few days also.  We will then move the WA Syrah from one 18 gal wood barrel and one 15.5 gal SS keg into a 30 gal wood barrel.  We will also move the Idaho Merlot from the 15.5 gal SS keg + the 4 gal in carboys into the vacated 18 gal barrel now containing WA Syrah leaving a little extra for topping.   We will talk more on the moving and consolidation of wines tomorrow during bottling of the whites.   

 

Winery Update

2/24/2011: Cabernet Tasting Trials. We tried 100% samples, 60/40, 50/50 and 40/60. Some people liked the 60/40 and some liked the 40/60. We all agreed that the wine was to cold to get a good feel for it.  We tried adding 5% malbec into a blend and most people liked that better.
 
We're going to move the ID Cabs into Stainless Steel Kegs and glass carboys to get it off of the oak and wait to bottle until the Malbec has gone through MLF (sometime in May) and then do another trial blending.  The 2010 cabs were topped up some, but not all the way. The extra 1G of 2010 wine in a carboy had a funky smell and taste.  We'll need to address moving the wine around soon.
 
We are preparing to bottle our Viognier. We may blend it with the left-over McAurthur Riesling. Meta levels are low, so we should add a little meta (15ppm), which will mostly blow off as we bottle. We decided to not filter this year because of prior issues. But we'll need to keep an eye on the wines to see if they pop corks from MLF.
 
2/17/2011: Topped and Tasted. All wines coming along well. ID Syrah and Malbec are over their HSO2 smell.  We tried a bottle of our 2006 cabernet. We had a glass poured undisturbed and then shook the bottle (similar to the repetitive inverting that happened during the recent comparative tasting) and poured a second glass. The biggest different was the clarity. The second glass was very cloudy.  There was some difference in the nose from disturbing the sediment, but it wasn't as evident as what we remembered from the comparative tasting. Ray suggested that the difference may be attributed to bottle variation or storage variation.  In either case we agreed that it would be worth opening bottles to check them before submitting them to a contest in the future.

2-8-2011 Viognier Lab Report

We ran tests at WineWise on the Viognier in preperation for bottling.  SO2 is at 8ppm and Malic acid is 1.70 g/L.

 

White wines require a higher level of SO2 than red wines and our low SO2 levels are likely contributing to our loosing the "freshness" and flavor in our white wines come Spring.  We need to discuss increasing our SO2 levels for whites when we rack them off the gross lees. Our Sulfites notes page gives a target of 35ppm for white wines.

 

The lab report shows a significant level of Malic acid in the Viognier. We didn't measure Malic acid on the must so we don't know if the amount of Malic acid has changed since primary fermentation.

 

The Viognier was fermented in a wood barrel and sat in that barrel for 4 weeks after fermentation was complete. So if it was exposed to ML cultures from the barrel I think it would have gone through MLF at that point as temperatures were warm enough. The only thing that would have inhibited it from going through ML would have been high SO2 levels.  But given our current level of 8ppm SO2 I would estimate that the SO2 was around 20ppm when we racked it out of the barrel--not too high for MLF to occur.

We should taste the Viognier to determine if we want it to go through MLF. If it has a very tart-apple taste then going through MLF will soften the wine. Going through MLF will also reduce the overall fruitiness.

 

If we decide we like the taste of the wine we can proceed with bottling it, with the addition of SO2 prior to racking it out of containers to protect it (we'll loose approx 10ppm from bottling).  The risk of bottling before MLF is that it could happen in the bottles which will result in corks-a-poppin. 

 

Troy

Rotten Egg Smell Mostly Gone

Last weekend we checked the Malbec and Syrah and they smelled much better. Just a small amount of rotten eggs in the Malbec. We racked them both off any sediment that had dropped and added 15ppm of meta (but not over copper).  We are very happy with the progress and think we've exorcised the rotten spirits.  We topped the rest of the wines. All smelled fine.

We tasted the 2009 cabernets. Both taste great and are at a good oak balance.  We will do some tasting trials and bottle in late February.  We don't have any Malbec or Petit Verdot this year so we'll be just blending the 2 cabs.

 

We have 60+ gallons, which will be 25+ cases (5 cases each...YEA!).  Everyone start getting your bottles ready.  We need 5 cases of shouldered bottles for the cab, plus we'll need some to bottle the Riesling.  We have to decide if we can bottle the Viognier now.  It hasn't had a chance to go through MLF and could blow corks if we bottle it now without filtering.  I think we're all hesitant about filtering because of the problems we've had.

 

 Previous Blog Entry from Sat, Jan 8, 2011

Ray and Mike racked the Idaho Merlot on Sat. 1/8.  We ended up with 20 gallons (15.5 keg; 3 gal carb; 1 gal carb; 1 plat) out of approximately 22 + gallons of pressings.  The wine smelled good, tasted good (slightly tart).  We added a touch of meta per the book.   The other barrels we checked smelled OK and were only down slightly.  Mike