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