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
