Troy, Ray, Bob and Michele met and racked the WA Malbec over copper on Sat. The rotten egg smell was diminished, but still very evident. The process went faster with some improvements to the copper flashing that Bob has fashioned. There wasn't much sediment. We racked it over copper out and back in and added approx 1/3tsp meta to the wine before racking back into the barrel.
We checked the Sangio and it is "holding steady" with a slight smell. One of the 3 15G SS kegs smells more than the others but we decided not to rack over copper that the filtering process would be enough rack-and-spash. We tasted it and while it isn't delightful, the taste has improved dramatically. It's dry, with an acid bite to the aftertaste--becase of the low-low PH. Certainly blending it with some high-ph cabernet will help balance that out. We think the Sangio is ready to filter--but when we contacted Brewcon about their filter the lady working there didn't know enough about the filter system to rent it out. We will have to talk with the husband. We are planning on filtering it next weekend (Sat or Sun). Troy will call and talk with the Brewcon owner this week to make sure the filter is ready this time.
When we filter the Sangio we have to decide how to handle it. Initially we planned on blending it with Bin-A (non acid corrected) Cabernet (approx 50/50) to balance out the acids. This would give us a good base for creating a super-tuscan. The wine needs to get into a barrel to help smooth it out and get some character. We will wait to filter the WA Malbec until we see how it impacts the Sangio. We may also decide we do not need to filter the WA Malbec as it didn't have as significant of a rotten egg smell.
We are proposing to filter and bottle the Chard in the winter (likely early Feb) this year instead of letting it go to Spring. This is based on recommendations in the Winemaking Seminar that Ray, Lee and I attended 2 summers ago to bottle early to capture the fruity flavors. This matches our experiences as over the last couple years we've noticed that we like the taste of the Chard the best mid-winter, so bottling it now makes sense. Filtering the wine will ensure that it is clear and doesn't go through MLF after it's in the bottle. Here's a link to the winemaking seminar notes, for reference.
http://riverwoodswinery.googlepages.com/WinemakingSeminarNotes.html . When we filter the Chard it would make sense to bottle it at the same time. So everyone should start to get some non-shouldered bottles ready. 2.5 cases each will be plenty. Remember Mike's suggestion to sprinkle a dash of straight-A into the bottle while you soak off lables will help make washing the insides go much faster (something important when you're washing bottles outside in the dead of winter!!).
When we filter the Sangio we need to decide our plan for what goes into barrels. We have a 15G barrel empty, and we have 45G of Sangio in SS kegs. We will have to decide which 30G of wine will remain in SS kegs. We can rotate the wines in/out and we have more oak dominoes we can use. Also, once we filter the Sangio Michele will be taking her 2 barrels out of the garage. One with Cab and one with Sangio/Cab.
I propose we split the 30G stainless storage across the SuperTuscan and Merlot--15G each. Every time we rack we'll combine the SS and Barrel wines which will balance out the flavors. This is how we've handled it in the past and it has worked out well.
We topped and spot-tasted the other wines. All are coming along very good. The merlot is tasty, the Williamson cab is good but has some sandpaper-like seed tannins that need to mellow in the barrel. The ID Malbec was very tasty--much better than the WA Malbec is right now.
