Merlot Racked. WA Malbec Fixed. Sangio Tainted

We did the final clarification racking on the 2 barrels and SS keg of merlot today, including adding 10-15ppm meta. Merlot is tasting good!

 

WA Malbec is smelling/tasting fine. Last racking over copper took care of it.

 

We checked the SS Keg of Sangio that had the oak dominos. The bung wasn't in tight and the wine is exposed to air.  There is an off flavor and smell. Hard to say if it's just from the oak dominoes. We're afraid it may be spoiled.  We racked it and added 30ppm meta and removed the wood. The SS Keg has been marked as BAD SANGIO. We should not blend this with the other super tuscan. We'll watch it to see if it stabilizes.

 

We still need to do the final racking on the cabernet and ID Malbec. If we want we could skip the 2 barrels that will be "reserve" for now and rack them in the Spring before bottling (to save time now).

WA Malbec Racked Over Copper

Over the weekend Bob and Lee discovered the rotten egg smell was back on the WA Malbec. Not too bad, but very noticeable. We racked over copper tonight 2x (out/in) plus added 15ppm meta.  We'll check it in a couple weeks--we expect it will be fine.

 

To help offset the under-ripe tart cherries in the Sangio and add some tannins we've added some oak dominoes. We started with 1.25lbs of Oak dominoes into the 15G SS keg. We'll let it stew for a couple weeks and check it. If we like it we'll add some to the 15G Hungarian barrel with super tuscan next.

 

We topped and tasted the rest of the wines which are all doing GREAT!  Stand-outs are the ID Malbec, the WA Clone-6 and the Merlot. Of the ID Cab, Ray's 30G barrel is the best.  All wines are on the home-stretch before bottling and will need to be racked one more time in early September for clarity.  The coolers are holding their temps very well.

A quick count of wine gallons shows about 276 gallons of red wine. We expect to hold over Ray's 30G barrel of Williamson cabernet and the 26G of WA Clone 6 cabernet for a cabernet reserve blend. That leaves us with about 215 gallons of wine to blend and bottle, or about 90 cases (18 cases each). Here's a breakdown of the gallons.

 

2008 Wine To Bottle

ID Cabernet: 38G

Merlot:  77G

ID Malbec: 32G

WA Malbec: 16G

Super Tuscan: 55G

 

Reserve Hold Over (We will each get ~5 cases of reserve cabernet next spring).

ID Cabernet 32G

WA Cabernet 27G

 

Some rough bottling calculations--subject to change as we refine the blends.

 

Boisique:

Assuming our Bordeaux blend has around a 30% merlot content and the super tuscan has about 10% merlot, we are left with 60G of Merlot for Boisique. With the normal 80%/20% blend that gives us about 75G of Boisique, or 6.25 cases each! (YEA!).

 

Super Tuscan:

Estimate 60G of Super Tuscan (including 10% merlot addition), 5 cases each.

 

Magnafique:

Estimate 38G cabernet, 15G Merlot and 10G of Malbec for a total of 63G or 5.25 cases

 

Malbec:

We have lots of malbec this year. A good 20+G more than we need (1 2/3 cases each). We can bottle it as a stand alone malbec or hold it over in case we don't get malbec grapes this year.  (We'll hold a 3 gallons over to mix with the reserve cabernet.)

Fwd: Sunday 7-12-09 Topping notes

Forwarding previous topping note from Mike for the blog records. Also, Ray topped up approx. July 31st.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Margaret Dimmick <dimmicks@earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 5:00 PM
Subject: Sunday 7-12-09 Topping notes
To: Lee Buddecke <buddecke@cableone.net>, Bob & Pam Cort <cort@cableone.net>, Ray Oelrich <rayo@cableone.net>, Troy Pearse <ttpearse@gmail.com>

Lee, Bob and Mike topped the wine barrels today from 1:00 to 2:15pm.  All the wine is tasting good and improving as time works its magic.  WE DID NOT TOP THE WA CAB because we forgot what we were topping it with.  We need to do that in the next day or two.  All barrels took about 3/4 of a bottle of wine with the Merlot and Cab in the new cooler taking nearly a bottle each.  The SS kegs with merlot and Sangio smell fine.  The Super Tucson is tasting better.  We broke one glass (1 gal) carboy down into a plat to top ID Malbec.  The plat with the WA Malbec was moved to a new plat because it appeared to be leaking.  I filled it with a Meta solution and hung it up to see. 

 

We put the remote thermometer in the new cooler and the old style in the old cooler due to speed of access.  Thing are looking good, BUT WE DO NEED TO TOP THE WA. CAB.   Mike

 

Margaret Dimmick

dimmicks@earthlink.net

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