We pressed out the Wood River Merlot and the Williamson Cabernet today in about 4.5 hours. 1,000lbs of Merlot and 2,000lbs of Cab. Wow, that's a lot of grapes!! It's great to finally have all of them pressed out. With the high alcohol levels it was a real struggle getting through fermentation this year. The merlot and cabernet are around .998 brix and still showing signs of fermenting a bit. We'd like to see them drop to .995 or .990 over the next week. We'll measure brix again when we rack them in a week or two.
The merlot was very tasty. Big flavors and color from a full MONTH on the skins. Still lots of fruit--or maybe a little sweetness. It's hard to say. The Cabernet was on the skins for about 3 weeks and was a bit harsh/bitter and alcoholic--maybe from the extra exposure to seeds from the way the grapes got crushed. We pressed the cabernet pretty lightly, trying to avoid a rise in PH and to minimize the hard tannins. We pressed the Merlot a little harder. We got 88G of Merlot out of 114G of must. More than we expected. A 77% yield. Maybe we had more merlot than we thought? We got 84G of Cabernet out of 246G of must--34% yield. Much less than we expected, although it was pressed very lightly. Maybe we had less Cabernet than we thought?
We racked the Clone-6 cab off it's gross lees and it tastes very good. We racked about 1/2 the Sangio over copper. The Sangio is smelling better, and is tasting better too. Still a little ways to go before we can filter it and call it "good".
Photos are uploaded to the group's 2008 online photo album.
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