Winery Update

We measured brix this afternoon.  The WA Syrah is at 4 brix and 70 degrees. It has been fermenting for a week, plus a 4 day cold soak. It would be nice to see it go another week or 10 days.

 

The ID Cab is fermenting well now, has a good cap and is at 24 brix and 62 degrees. I added 80 grams of Fermaid to the ID Cab for it's first nutrient dose. That's about a 125% dose, since the nitrogen levels showed up a little low.

 

The ID Syrah is in a cold soak.  The brix were high (28-30) so I added about 7.5G of filtered tap water to get it down to 26 brix. I'll take a sample down to WineWise Monday to get a juice panel run.  I expect to innoculate Monday night which would be a 4 day cold soak.

 

The Viognier appears to be done fermenting--we should pull a sample and check the Brix. It can safely sit under it's blanket of CO2 for another few days--or more--and soak up some more oak.

 

Looking forward to the next 2 weeks:

 

- Bob has been working on cleaning up the barrels (Thanks Bob!). They are better, but some may need a second treatment of ProxyCarb to get out the nail polish smell.

 

- We need to rack the Merlot and the Viognier off the gross lees sometime next week. We could do it Wednesday this week or the following Tuesday.

  

- The WA Syrah should ferment until the cap drops.  That could be another week. We'll have to watch it. I'd like to press it on Tue, Nov 9th if we can.

 

- We want to press the WA Cab before the cap drops to limit extraction of those green seeds. Maybe with 10 brix left. Probably a week or so. Could work out to be the same timing as pressing the WA Syrah.

 

- We expect Larry's grapes around Nov 10th.  We need to have pressed a couple of bins before then. I will ask him to crush for us.  We'll have to coordinate getting some containers out to him for picking and crushing. Note: I've put my trailer away. It can be pulled out at any time.

 

ID Syrah Picked, WA Cab Innoculated

We picked up 700# of Syrah from Williamson's today and crushed it for 72G of Must.  We added about 8-10# of Viognier to co-ferment. We had more, but the fruit had started to spoil from sitting so long.  The Syrah fruit was in great shape. Grapes were slightly dehydrated with saggy skins.  Seeds were good and nutty brown. Some berries had more juice than others. Brix came in at 30 on the Hydrometer, so probably 28.5.  PH came in surprisingly low around 3.5-3.6.  We'll get a juice panel run on it to check sugars, ph and nitrogen levels.  We sanitized the must and it is in cold soak for a few days.

 

The WA Cab has been in cold soak for 4 days, and color has been getting better every day.  pH had dropped from 3.89 to 3.77 after our addition of 1 g/l of Tartaric acid, which is what we expected. We decided to make a second addition of 1 g/l (11.32 TBSP) to get the PH into a safer zone.  This cab will be used for blending into the Bordeaux blend, so we're not overly concerned about it being a bit tart. But if we feel the taste is to tart then we'll stick the barrel outside this winter for awhile to do some cold stabilization and precipitate out some of the acid.  We also inoculated the Cab with Pasteur Red yeast and GoFerm.

 

The WA Syrah is fermenting strongly and is down to 15 Brix and is tasting FABULOUS!  We did a second Fermaid-K nutrient addition (75% dose since the brix were a bit lower).  The temp was a bit warm at 77 degrees so we threw in a frozen jug of water to try and cool it down a bit.

 

The Viognier bubbler is slowing down considerably and is close to being done fermenting. We will rack it into Stainless in the next few days.

 

Larry's grapes (Tempranillo, Malbec, Merlot) are still a good week out, enjoying some late hang time.  Weather looks favorable.

Syrah and Cab Acid Adjusted

PH on the Cab was 3.89 and the Syrah was more like 3.75. We added 1.0 g/l of Tartaric Acid to the Cab (11.32 TBSP) and 0.5 g/l to the Syrah (9.2 TBSP).  We will measure the pH and see if the cab needs more adjustment.

 

The WA Syrah is fermenting with a heavy cap and we will add some fermaid-k tonight. 

 

The cab is in a cold-soak for a couple more days to get good color before we start it fermenting. We plan to shorten the time on the skins for the cab and press once Brix drops below 10. The goal is to focus on skins exposure while there is less alcohol then get it off the skins to keep from extracting the green flavors from the seeds.  Color is getting better on the cab. Here is a picture of the color 12 hours after pressing and then 24 hours later.

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010#5532518301727108962 

Merlot Pressed, Cab Crushed, Syrah Innoculated

A busy day at the winery, but we had LOTs of help.

 

Cheryl drove over to Walla Walla on Saturday and picked up Cabernet from RiverRock Vineyard.  We got about 600#.  Fruit was tasty but seeds and stems are a little bit greener than normal.  Chemistry came in great: 26+ Brix and Ph 3.6-3.7.  We crushed it and with a small nick and cleaned up as many stems from the must as we could. We'll limit the skins time this year to keep from extracting the green flavors.

 

The Merlot has been fermenting for 18 days and was down to about 1 Brix with a soggy cap. We pressed it and got 85G of wine.  That's about a 75% yield, remembering that we added about 10G of water to reduce the brix.  It is in a 30G Hungarian and 28G American oak plus carboys. We'll rack it off the gross lees in about a week.

 

The WA Syrah had been in a cold soak for 4 days. It is also running high on Brix (28.5) so we added about 10.5G to reduce the Brix to 26 Brix (14.5% alcohol).  We inoculated it with Pasteur Red yeast and GoFerm. This is the first time we've used the bulk yeast so it took some time to figure out the measurements. We estimate a 5 gram package of yeast has about 1 1/8 tsp which is good for 5G of must. So for the 105G of Must we added about 8 TBSP of yeast. 

 

Several empty barrels have a strong VA (nail polish remover/acetone) smell. We've ordered more ProxyCarb to clean them up.

 

Pictures are uploaded to our Picasa album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010

 

 

 

 

 

 

2009 Final Bottling

We did our final blending and bottling tonight for the 2009 grapes (excluding the cabernets, which will stay in a barrel for 6 more months). 

 

The tasting trials were the longest and most difficult we've done to date.  We tried to find a reasonable Boisique blend, but could not. The merlot just wasn't good enough this year.  We ended up with an Encore blend of Petite Sirah, Syrah and Malbec that we liked and a "Tailgate Red" blend with the rest of the wine.  The final blends were:

 

2009 Encore

50% Syrah

32% Petite Sirah

18% Malbec

 

2009 Tailgate Red

76% Merlot

15% Malbec

5% Cab Franc

4% Syrah

 

Photos from the night are uploaded to the Riverwoods 2010 album on Picasa at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010

 

 

 

Merlot Punch down report

Punched down Merlot at 9 pm. Cap was dense. Color and flavor continue to improve. Must was  at 21.5 percent and 75 degrees.

Fermentation has been slow. It was time for the second nutrient addition. I Added 150 grams of Fermaid-k, Which is 150 percent dose, to offset the low nitrogen levels.

Ready for final bottling

We will bottle the Bosique and Encore on Thursday, after the blending trials.  Blending trials are set to start at 5-5:30pm. Bring a snack to share.

 

We will wash bottles Wednesday at noon.  We have about 84 gallons of wine, which is 420 bottles total.  I anticipate around 49-50 gallons of Boisique (250 bottles, ~21 cases of shouldered bottles). The remaining 170 bottles will be Encore (or Encore and Cousins), which can be non-shouldered or shouldered.  Cleaning 21 cases of Shouldered and 14 cases of Non-Shouldered should do us.

 

Here is a breakdown of wine we have left.

 

37G       Merlot

21.5G    Malbec

15G       Cousins (50/50)

8G         Syrah

2G         Cab Franc

 

For Boisique we'll try 3 blends to start:

80% Merlot, 20% Malbec

75% Merlot, 25% Malbec

71% Merlot, 25% Malbec, 4% Cab Franc

 

For the left-over wine we will try:

 

1. Syrah, Petite Syrah, Malbec  (2 cousins and an in-law?)

2. Syrah, Petite Syrah (2 cousins)

3. Syrah, Malbec (standard encore)

 

 

 

Merlot Is Fermenting Strongly

The merlot has started fermenting and there is a thick cap on top.

 

We pitched yeast yesterday. 23 packages of Pasteur Red yeast plus Go Ferm nutrient.  We added about 100 grams of Fermaid-K mid-day Sunday to help the fermentation along and will make another Fermaid-K addition when the brix drops to around 20.

 

We did a cold soak for 2 days at about 60 degrees. The must temperature today was 65 degrees, which is a good temp at the lower end of the optimum range (64-86). We would like to keep it on the cooler side to get a slower fermentation.

WA Syrah/Merlot Update

I talked with Angie today. The Washington (Double Canyon) Syrah is expected to be here Saturday the 16th, possibly Friday.  She said ripeness is good and they are waiting for acids to balance out before they pick. 

 

Angie ran some lab tests on the WA Merlot and said the nutrients came back very low and she recommends a good dose of nutrients to ensure the fermentation is healthy and doesn't stick.  I'll review our planned GoFerm & Fearmaid-K dose with her recommendation.  She also recommended some Brix reduction with 9G of filtered or bottled water.

 

We have a Trial Blending set for Thursday Oct 14th for the Bosique, followed by bottling.  We might also bottle the Encore at that time, if we have enough bottles ready.  How about if we do the same time : Trials at 5:30pm followed by bottling?

 

I've been rotating frozen water jugs into the must to keep it cool. It is holding at 60 degrees with no signs of fermentation.  I will ameliorate tonight and innoculate Saturday morning (details below, for reference) and then we will need to start doing punchdowns 3x day.

 

Troy

 

Since we have high brix and low nutrient we'll use a slightly higher amount of yeast and GoFerm.  They recommend 1.2 grams of yeast, 1.5 grams of GoFerm in 30ml (1oz) of water of per gallon of must.

-Yeast is added to warm water (104º F) containing Go-Ferm and allowed to soak for 20 minutes.

- Stir it gently to break-up any clumps. Wait 15-30 minutes, stir a second time.

*Do not go beyond 30 minutes in the hydration solution or the yeast will begin to starve.

- Then a small amount of the must is added to the yeast starter and the mixture is allowed to sit for another 20 minutes. The yeast is then ready to be introduced to the must.

- The next day add an initial dose of Fermaid-K nutrient once fermentation starts. 1 gram per gallon of must.  Once the Brix drops to by 33% add a second dose of the Fermaid-K.

 

 

Merlot Crush

We picked up 1,000# of Red Mountain (WA) Merlot today that we were lucky enough to get through Dennis (Thanks Dennis!). The fruit was FANTASTIC! Nice ripeness of the berries, stems and seeds. Flavor was great and there was a good amount of concentrated juice. We are VERY excited to have it in the winery and see what we can do with it.

Dennis had his fruit crushed and checked and it read 28.2 Brix and 3.53 pH--amazing. When we checked ours it came out a solid 30 Brix on the Hydrometer. Dennis stopped by and had a refractometer and it read just under 29. So we'll say it's somewhere between 29 and 30. Our pH meter wouldn't calibrate, so we couldn't check the pH. We'll get a new crystal and check it later but we assume it will be 3.6 or so, based on Dennis' numbers.

The potential alcohol for a 29/30 Brix reading is 16.75-17.5%, which is too high for Pasteur Red yeast. We need to get it down to the 15-16% range to ensure a complete fermentation, plus we've found that when the alcohol gets up that high it makes the wine too hot and unbalanced. So we will discuss ameliorating the wine.

To drop us into the 26-27 brix range we need about 8-12G of water (using the online calculator at: http://vinoenology.com/calculators/chaptalization-and-water-dilution/ that we've used before). We should look at adding the water early in the fermentation cycle so we get more skins exposure (ideally during the cold soak). After crush we estimate we have about 99G of Must. We added 4 TBSP of meta to sanatize the must and will do a cold soak for 2 days and innoculate Friday night or Saturday morning using the Pasteur Red and some GoFerm nutrient.

Photos have been uploaded to the Riverwoods 2010 Wine Photos, at the end of the album.

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2010

Troy