Chard fermenting fast!

Lee innoculated the chard Fri late, and on Mon eve it was down to 2.5
brix! It was still fermenting strongly and should be done in a day or
two. Troy added 1 more TBSP of nutrient as it is highly reccomended
when using the Cotes des Blancs yeast with Chardonnay.

We are fermenting in the 60G barrel with a breathable bung. A good
way to keep air out and still let CO2 escape.

The wine will be ready to move the wine into stainless kegs on Wed or Thu.

2008 Chard crushed

Lee and Mike picked up a microbin full of chard on Thursday. Est
500-600 pounds. We crushed Thu night. A good 35-40 gallons are in the
60G fermenter, sanatized with just under 4tsp meta.

Chard has more body, great acids and is less sweet this year. More
like the 2006.

24 Brix
3.1 PH

Lee pulled a quart of juice off and is doing the starter. He will add
it tonight or Sat. We are trying a different yeast this year, Cotes
Blanc, to get more fruit flavors. 5 packages plus 2 TBSP nutrient.
We will want to add another 2 TBSP right after fermentation starts.

Troy made a bentonite slurry of 2oz bentonite, 3 cups boiling water
blended and added it Fri morning. GLOP GLOP GLOP!

Quick Grape Report

Lee and I went out to Williamsons on Sat and then stopped by and saw Dennis. Wanted to pass along a couple notes from our discussions.

 

Roger indicated we could have up to 2,000lbs of Cab.  Syrah is unlikely as Koenig wants all he can get. Roger did say we could go in and pick after the mechanical pickers, though. It is worth a try to see what we can get.  Same with the Viognier, we will likely have to "gleen" after the regular picking.  Roger only has a little petite syrah and he doesn't know what they are going to do with it. So they may have some for us.  Roger did comment that the grapes were coming along nicely.

 

Dennis indicated that 1,000 lbs of merlot was easy to do, as is 300-500lbs of Chard.  We could also likely get some cab, but we told him no as we are getting lots of cab from Roger this year.  The malbec is more difficult because the new owners want all the malbec. Dennis may be able to get us a bin of malbec--but doesn't know for sure. And if we get a bin, we likely will get a 1,000lb full bin and not the smaller bins.  On the microbins, I think we'll be able to get 1-3 of the "smaller" microbins from Dennis, with the expectation that we keep them (price yet to be determined...). 

 

So here is how the 2008 order is rounding out. If we don't get any Malbec from Dennis,we have enough coming from Prosser to make Boisique and Maganfique. But we won't be able to do a cab/malbec or syrah/malbec blend.  Since the 500# of Syrah from Roger is unknown and we didn't get the 500# of Clone-6 from Dennis we have extra capacity for more of Roger's cabernet so we should do 1,000 pounds and could do 1,500 pounds. 

 

Wood River

- 300-500lbs Chard

- 1,000lbs Merlot

- 0 - 1,000lbs Malbec

 

Williamson

- 500lbs Viognier (gleen picking)

- 1,000-2,000lbs Clone 2 Cabernet

- 500 lbs Syrah (gleen picking--not sure how much we can expect)

- 100 lbs Petite Syrah (gleen picking? -- not sure if we can, and how much we can expect)

 

RiverRock (WA)

- 400 lbs Clone 6 Cabernet

 

Prosser

- 250 lbs Malbec

- 700 lbs Sangiovese

 

 

 

07 Boisique Bottling

We bottled 20 cases of Boisique last night, with the bottle washing being done the day before. Everyone got 4 cases of pure vino excitement!  Boy the Boisique sure tastes good out of a barrel! :-D

We had a double bottling line setup for awhile, which works great, but the second bottler kept failing to keep a siphon. Ray has ordered a nifty 3-bottle filler that will be more sturdy and really speed up bottling. Check it out at: http://www.eckraus.com/RK760.html . We will wait for our next bottling until it arrives. We'll have to work around the arrival of the Chard grapes (expected 9/25) followed by the Viognier grapes, ETA Oct 1.  We have a big run of Magnafique to do. It will be close to 30 cases!

Photos from my phone-camera are uploaded to the RiverWoods 2008 photo album, linked to our web page.

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2008

 

Trial Blending #2

BLOG ENTRY

 

Trial Blending #2

The group met and tried lots of blends. After much discussion (and some purple tongues) we decided on the following. Number of bottled cases of each wine is an estimate. We need to validate how many gallons we have in carboys.

1. Magnafique

We increased the merlot by 5 percent over the last tasting trials and added 1% petit verdot. We tried it both with "blended" cabs and the just the idaho cab. No clear favorite. The blended cab was a stronger flavor, for sure. We increased the merlot another 10%, and blended it with just the Idaho cab and liked this blend the best. So this year we have a "Left Bank" style Bordeaux blend. Tasty!

 

Est 70G (29+ Cases)

40% Idaho Cab (28G)

50% Wood River Merlot (35G) ** Need to hold back 35G of Merlot from the Boisique blending.

9% Wood River Malbec (6.3G)

1% Petit Verdot (0.7G)

 

2. Cab Blends

We kept the WA clone-6 separate. It's very strong this year--over ripe from hanging a long time (28 brix). Plus it picked up strong flavors from the MH toast French recoop barrel. We Tried blending it with Syrah and Malbec. We all liked the 60/40 Cab Syrah (better than the straight syrah) and the 60/40 Cab Malbec blend, but liked the Cab/Malbec blend the best. So we have a new blend that needs to be named.

 

(12.5 Cases)

60% RiverRock Clone-6 Cabernet (18G)
50% Wood River Malbec (12G)

3. Encore

Last year we made an Encore blend of syrah rose, malbec and a heavy dose of petit verdot. This year we liked the blend better without the petit verdot. It is amazing how well Syrah and Malbec blend together! Our blend this year is:

 

25G (10.4 Cases)

73% RiverRock Syrah (18.25G)

27% Wood River Malbec (6.75G)

 

4. Boisique

We decided on 80/20 at our last tasting.

(21 Cases)

80% Wood River Merlot (40G)

20% Wood River Malbec (10G)

First trial blending results.

The group met to try some different blends for the 2007 wines.

Bosique: Everyone liked the 80/20 merlot/malbec blend the best. The
difference between it and the 75/25 blend was amazing.

We tried 2 different Magnafique blends with no favorite. We will try
dialing up the merlot a bit to 50/40/10 cab/merlot/malbec. We may
also try just blending with the ID cab as the clone6 has a strong
menthol cherry smell (the initial blends were 50/50 cabs).

We will meet again on Monday at 730pm to try more blends, including
some encore blends to use up our extra cab and malbec. Here are some
potential blends.

- 50/50 cab syrah
- 60/40 cab malbec
- 33/33/33 cab syrah malbec
- 50/40/10 syrah malbec p verdot
- 95/4/1 cab malbec p verdot
- 100% syrah

Tasting Trials

Time to do some trial blending! Get your taste buds ready. :)

First trial is Wed at 7:30pm with the second the following Mon or Tue.

We will decide on our Magnafique, and Boisique Blends plus try some
options for our "Encore" blend.

Troy

Fall Schedule

Here are the dates we've gotten grapes the last couple years. We expect everything is a week or two later this year. But it's hard to say.  The cab will likely need to hang as long as possible to ripen--until frost is eminent.

 

Lee has mentioned several times that he would like to get some Chard in addition to the Viognier. I don't see any reason not to do it. It doesn't take a barrel and we have the capacity in Stainless. Anyone object?  The bonus of doing 30G of the Chard is it will come in a 500# microbin, which we can use for fermenting and possibly on our 2 runs to Washington for grapes this Fall.  Please reply-all with your thoughts. If we're going to do it we need to contact Dennis with the request ASAP.

 

Everyone should be getting bottles ready. 15 cases each, including 1.5 cases of non-shouldered for the syrah.  If you can, pre-rinse them with some straight-a to get out the stains to help make the bottle washing go faster.  I expect we'll want to do some wash-days before our bottle days.  We've got a lot of wine to bottle this Fall, and it will take 2 or 3 bottlings.  What are people's schedules between Sept 21 - October 5th so we can start to coordinate bottling?

 

We need to do some blending trials as well for this year's Boisique and Magafique. Plus we need to decide how we want to handle the syrah and the extra cabernet and malbec.  Here are a couple options to think about--we need to taste them and vote on what we like. (These are only a few options to start the discussion).

 

1. Keep Varietals Separate

Bottle 100% syrah. Bottle 95% cab + 5% malbec. Bottle 100% Malbec.

 

2. Separate Syrah and a Cab/Malbec Blend

Bottle 100% syrah. Bottle cab and malbec together at a 60%cab 40% malbec ratio.  Like the Amencya blend we tasted a few weeks ago.

 

3. Encore blend of Cab/Malbec/Syrah

Combine the syrah cab and malbec together. It would be similar to our "Encore" blend last fall. We found that Syrah and Malbec blended well, and I've seen several wines on the market that do this blend.  We need to taste it and see what we like!

 

Troy

 

PS: Ray--have you decided on your new barrel? You might consider holding off ordering it until we have confirmation that we'll get all the grapes we want. We have stainless and carboy storage where we can hold the wine for a few weeks if needed.

 

 

Chard

- Sept 16 2006

- Sept 20 2007

 

Viognier

- ~ Oct 1 2006 (we picked a little later than everyone else. grapes were ready a week before)

 

Merlot

- ~Oct 1 2006

- Oct 5 2007

- Oct 14 2007 (Wood River

 

Malbec

- Oct 14 2006

- Oct 5 2007

 

Syrah

- Oct 6 2006 (hells canyon)

- Oct 27 2007 (River rock)

 

Cab

- Oct 14 2006 (Wood River Clone 6)

- Oct 19 2006 (Williamson)

- Oct 23 2006 (River Rock clone 8)

- Oct 14 2007 (Wood River Clone 8)

- Oct 15 2007 (Riverrock Clone 6)