We racked the Hells Canyon Syrah and Williamson Petite Sirah off the gross lees tonight. The syrah had a bit of a funky smell so we're glad we got it racked. The Petite Syrah continues to taste good. We still need to rack the cabernet and cab franc off the gross lees. The sooner the better. We topped the 08 reserve cabs. They are coming along very well.
We discussed the port option with the extra Petite Sirah we got from Larry. Mike brought a Bogle Petite Sirah ruby style port for us to taste and help make a decision. Everyone liked the port and we decided to give it a try. Lee was in Twin Falls but we know he is wanting to make the port and will be happy with the decision.
We are going to use the method of fortification partway through fermentation. Since this reduces the time on the skins we decided to continue a cold-soak for a couple more days. The juice was at 58 degrees and showing no signs of activity. We added 2 frozen 1G water jugs to help cool the juice more and we expect to inoculate on Thursday. To help improve extraction we talked about doing a submerged cap and punching down 1x a day--or punching down 6x a day.
We'll use a reduced amount of GoFerm and the RC212 yeast (with a tolerance of 16% alcohol) to try and slow fermentation. Starting Brix is 26.5. Once we hit about 10-12 brix (4-5 days?) we will add 2G - 2.5G of Everclear to boost the alcohol and stop fermentation. It will take a day or so to stop and then we will press (the cap should fall). Then it will be winemaking as normal with the exception of keeping the sulfites a little higher to keep any bacterial growth down because of the residual sugars. We will store the wine in stainless and glass until we bottle the reserve in the spring and then we'll move it into a barrel.
We expect to get about 22G total port (20G wine and 2G Everclear) with around 18% alcohol and 8 brix of residual sugar.
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