Two notes about the Chardonnay that haven't been mentioned that I wanted captured in the blog for future reference.
1. We tried double pressing the must--gently by recycling the juice through the cake. This increased our volume and darkened the color some.
2. This is the first time we've allowed any significant skins contact before pressing. We had a good 16 hours of skins contact which should add considerable varietal flavor plus body to the chardonnay. The Chardonnay juice stayed in contact with the skins overnight since Larry pressed it and we picked it up the next day. Larry put some Meta on the must (not sure how much) and we added approx 50ppm more when we got it.
We checked the Chardonnay Friday afternoon. It had been fermenting about 24 hours in the cooler. Fermentation was going well. Must temperature was 75 degrees, which is a little warmer than we would like so we moved the barrel closer to the A/C. We added approx 25 grams of Fermaid-K and stirred it in. The last 2 years the Chard fermented in 5-8 days. I'm not sure if it will ferment slower at the cooler temperature or not.
We will need to check temperature and stir daily. We need to take a Brix reading today. We want to add another Fermaid-K nutrient dose when the must reaches 16 brix. We don't want to add the nutrient if the brix have dropped below 12 because it won't be able to use them all and the leftover nutrients will provide "food" for unwanted bacteria.
When stirring we should try and "stir up" the bottom of the container. Here is the note from the MoreWine White Winemaking guide.
For each day the fermentation is underway it is important to get all of the lees (the layer of yeast that settles out on the bottom of the fermenter) stirred back up into suspension. You are looking for the must to become beige and creamy. This allows the fermenting wine to expel many negative fermentation odors that are a natural product of fermentation. It also helps to keep the wine from developing sulfur problems.
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