Super Tuscan Final Blend

A great night of tasting trials again proves that group blind tasting is the best way to a successful blend!  We ended up with a bit of an A-B-C blend that incorporated some merlot and cab and petit verdot along with the Sangio, which made for a very nice balance. The group also decided to try and use up the 2005 Petit Verdot in the Super Tuscan blend (leaving a little bit for the Bordeaux Blend).

The final blend ended up being:

 

10 oz ST Base

1 oz Cab

1 oz Merlot

1/2 oz Petit Verdot

 

Which translates to a blend of approximately

 

56% Sangio

32% Cab

8% Merlot

4 Petit Verdot

 

We have about 55G of Super Tuscan Base (need to do a final count with all carboys). Applying the following blend:

 

ST Base 80%

Add 8% merlot

Add 8% cab

Add 4% petit verdot

 

Assuming 55G of Super Tuscan Base we will have 68.75G of blended wine (5 3/4 cases each).  The breakdown would be as follows (again, need to recalc after counting all the ST Base in Carboys)

80% * 68.75 = 55G ST Base

8% Cab Addition = 5.5G Cab

8% Merlot Addition = 5.5G Merlot

4% PV Addition = 2.75G Petit Verdot

 

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Troy Pearse <ttpearse@gmail.com> wrote:

The group meets tonight to decide our Super Tuscan Blend (7pm).  We've had a couple of successful pre-trial blends by adding 20% cab or 20% merlot.  Tonight we'll try the following 3 blends (blind) and see which style we like best. Then we'll tune it (+/- 5%) if needed.  I've tried to keep Sangio as the dominant grape percentage so we keep the Italian style and dryness of the Sangio.

 

Troy

 

Our 2005 field-blend Super Tuscan was:

56% Sangio

33% Cab

11% Petit Verdot

 

Our current Super Tuscan "base" is approx:

68% Sangio

32% Cab

 

Trial Blend #1: ST Base + Merlot (Add merlot to emphasize the cherry fruit in the sangio.)

 

10 oz ST Base

2 oz Merlot

12 oz TTL

 

Results in

58%Sangio

25% Cab

17% Merlot

 

 

Trial Blend #2: Base Pl+us More Cab (Add Cab to add more depth of flavor and some body.)

10 oz ST Base

2 oz Cab

12 oz TTL

 

Results In:

58% Sangio

42% Cab

 

 

Trial Blend #3: Base + Cab & Petit Verdot (Flavor, body, and  BAM!--Similar to our 2005 blend.)

10 oz ST Base

2 oz Cab

1 oz Petit Verdot

 

Results In:

54% Sangio

38% Cab

8% Petit Verdot

 

--
Posted By Troy Pearse to Riverwoods Wineries at 9/20/2009 10:39:00 AM

Super Tuscan Trial Blends

The group meets tonight to decide our Super Tuscan Blend (7pm).  We've had a couple of successful pre-trial blends by adding 20% cab or 20% merlot.  Tonight we'll try the following 3 blends (blind) and see which style we like best. Then we'll tune it (+/- 5%) if needed.  I've tried to keep Sangio as the dominant grape percentage so we keep the Italian style and dryness of the Sangio.

 

Troy

 

Our 2005 field-blend Super Tuscan was:

56% Sangio

33% Cab

11% Petit Verdot

 

Our current Super Tuscan "base" is approx:

68% Sangio

32% Cab

 

Trial Blend #1: ST Base + Merlot (Add merlot to emphasize the cherry fruit in the sangio.)

 

10 oz ST Base

2 oz Merlot

12 oz TTL

 

Results in

58%Sangio

25% Cab

17% Merlot

 

 

Trial Blend #2: Base Pl+us More Cab (Add Cab to add more depth of flavor and some body.)

10 oz ST Base

2 oz Cab

12 oz TTL

 

Results In:

58% Sangio

42% Cab

 

 

Trial Blend #3: Base + Cab & Petit Verdot (Flavor, body, and  BAM!--Similar to our 2005 blend.)

10 oz ST Base

2 oz Cab

1 oz Petit Verdot

 

Results In:

54% Sangio

38% Cab

8% Petit Verdot

 

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

EarthLink Revolves Around You.

 

Riverwoods Website Location Changing

Google is in the process of changing over their website service and we have to move our Riverwoods Web Page. I've been moving the content over the last month and the basic web page replacement is back up at: http://sites.google.com/site/riverwoodswineries/ .  I can add anyone else as an owner of the website as well. Let me know if you're interested.

 

Troy

 

PS: What do people think of putting the web address on our wine labels? I'd also like to setup a Riverwoods Wine Driker blog that people could email and give their feedback on our wine.

Super Tuscan Pre-Trials

Michele and Tom came over to pick up some wine for blending into their cabernet and super tuscan as they are getting ready to bottle.

 

We tried a couple super tuscan blends adding merlot and petit verdot.  Adding 10%-20% merlot helped a lot. Smoothed out the flavors and tempered the tartness without covering up the sangio.  We tried adding some petit verdot but didn't like it too much. It was too strong tasting for this year's lighter sangio.

 

For reference, our last super tuscan was a field blend of 56% Sangiovese, 33% Cabernet and 11% Petit Verdot.  I think the field blend with petit verdot last time helped the flavors integrate much better than the post-blending approach. The current Super Tuscan "base" is about about 68% Sangio and 32% cab.

 

I am also slightly suspect of the petit verdot in the plastic platypus. It's been in there for a year (or more) and could have some off flavors.  When we do our blends this fall we should try blending using wine from the carboys.

 

Troy

Second Cooler Operational

Ray and Lee got the second cooler assembled on Monday and we moved the final barrel in on Tuesday, so all of the wine is now under climate control. Just in time for the hot weather.  They were able to put the larger A/C unit on the older, larger, cooler to help circulation.  We'll have to monitor temps and adjust as needed.

 

We took the opportunity to top and taste.  All wines are sound and tasting very good. A couple tasting notes.

 

1. The Clone 6 Cab has started to wake up and has much more nose and flavor than it has since ML. We are hopeful that we'll be able to hold it over to blend into the reserve Cabernet.

 

2. The Williamson cab continues to have some harsher seed tannins. The cab in Ray's new 30G barrel is the best. You can smell and taste the new wood. It's probably the one to hold over for Reserve.

 

3. The Merlot continues to be very tasty.

 

4. The ID Malbec didn't have as much fruit this time.

 

5. The Sangio blend is very tart cherries. Needs more time in the barrel and some blending.

 

6. All wines were down significantly--a good bottle or more. We should try to top every 2 weeks.

 

Bob's new wine carts work terrific!

 

Troy

Cooler Expansion

The gang met today in Bob's garage and worked on the portable cooler. We got all the sides constructed. Looks like a good design.

 

Mike brought over a small A/C unit to use. It's larger than the one on the current wine-box so we may swap it.

 

Photos online at: http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2009 

 

The one of Lee helping set the glue is priceless! :-D

 

Troy

ML Complete

We topped and tasted on Sunday and ML has completed.  All wines are sound and we have some great wines for blending plus enough cabernet to hold a barrel or two over for a reserve wine.

 

- The merlot was the favorite of the night, dark and full flavored followed by the ID Malbec.  The malbec continues to have no green flavors--I think the longer ripening time made a difference.  The merlot & malbec will make some GREAT Boisique this year!

 

- The rotten egg smell is now gone on the WA Malbec. 

 

- The Williamson cabernet continues to be a little harsh from the exposed seed tannins, but more time in the barrel will mellow that.

 

- The WA Clone-6 Cab is unremarkable this year--not sure why. Maybe we took too much must off to co-ferment with the Super Tuscan?  When we rack I'd like to move it into a newer barrel like Bob's 20G French Med+ to help bring up the nose and flavors.

 

- The sangio/cab blend is light but pleasant with no rotten egg smell. It is starting to pick up some wood and get a little drier--showing it's sangio.  Add some Petit Verdot for some back-bone and maybe a little merlot to bring out the cherries and I think it will be a nice Super Tuscan.

 

- We broke down a 5G merlot into 1G carboys plus the platypus and re-filled the sangio and malbec topping (note: each platypus could use to get a pinch of meta to keep down the bugs.)

 

- We are topping both malbecs with ID malbec.

 

- We are topping both cabs with WA cab.

 

7 Barrels are in the main cooler with all carboys and the AC is on.  3 barrels and 2 ss kegs are still out on the garage floor. The group is working on a second stand-alone cooler to go over them.  Now that ML is complete we will be doing a clarification racking of all wines soon. Proposed time is next Sun and Mon.

Super Tuscan Thoughts

If we end up bottling a super tuscan now, for storage reasons, here's what it would look like.

 

For reference, our last super tuscan was a field blend of 56% Sangiovese, 33% Cabernet and 11% Petit Verdot.

 

The current Super Tuscan "base" is about 52G of Sangio and 25G of Cabernet.  That's about 68% Sangio and 32% cab.

 

If we end up bottling early for space, we'll also need to empty a 15G SS keg of Merlot.

 

We have 5G of Petit Verdot.

 

52G Sangio   54%

25G Cabernet  26%

15G Merlot  15%

5G  Petit Verdot 5%

 

For a total of 97 G of Super Tuscan!  That's 8 cases each!  (So we had better like it!)

 

I think that's a reasonable blend, but we'd have to do a taste trial to see what we think.

 

Troy

 

 

 

ML done update

April 30, 2009, Lee, Ray and Mike checked the topping of wines and added ML to:  Super Tuscan; Merlot, Malbec and the Clone 6 Cab.  Used a total of 8 packets of WYEAST laboratories 4007 MALO-LAC 0617105 ; mfg 27 APR 09. We did not add ML to the Williamson Cab. 

 

In the next few days, I will get another packet of ML for the larger Carboys in the cooler we did not treat cuz we ran out of ML.

 

 We tasted all wines and everything seems OK.  There was a slight oilly film on the Idaho Malbec.  Sprayed a bit of Meta on it.  Need to check next topping.  Opinion of the above 3 tasters is that the Super Tuscan needs some wood.  Bottling early, as talked/planned for in June, is maybe slipping.  Need to look at summer storage for the extra bbls this year if we don't bottle the SuperT.  Merlot and Willys Cab is REALLY tasting great.  This Cab should make a great Reserve.

 

Ray thought he and Bob could slap together a breakdown cooler in a couple of weeks.  I'm available to help as needed.     Mike

 

 

Margaret Dimmick

dimmicks@earthlink.net

EarthLink Revolves Around You.

 

Malbec racking and toping April 9, 09

We met at 7pm and topped the wines.  All looks good.  The wood barrels were down quite a bit, some more than a bottle.  We should keep an eye on them for the next topping session.  We also racked the Wa. Malbec over copper to rid the last of the sulpher smell.  We are still keeping the Idaho and Wa. Malbecs separate when topping until we are sure the sulpher is gone.  Ray used a tank cleaning wand built for RVs to clean the Wa. Malbec barrel.  WOW does it work great for getting out the clumps and scab.  

 

Troy brought an 04 Malbec made by the wonderful Riverwoods Wineries.  Really Good!!!     The Tempernillo? we tasted that Mike brought is on sale at Ericksons for 6.99.   That's it.  Happy Days.    Mike

 

 

Margaret Dimmick

dimmicks@earthlink.net

EarthLink Revolves Around You.

 

Chard filtering and bottling

On March 3rd, we filtered and bottled the Chard.  We started with glass containers and used the fine filters.  We then moved into the SS kegs and used the medium filters.  Finally, we filtered the dregs from all containers using the medium filters.  We used the medium filters last due to the trouble we had last time with fine filters plugging up easily.  We only ran the wine through the filters once, then bottled.  We ended up with two cases plus three bottles for each of us.   We will need to watch this Chard and see if we have any problems we might tie back to only filtering once.  We may want to get more filters and run the wine through twice (medium followed by fine filters) next time.  I would also recommend that next time we use the filter system, we have a flat pan with wine to presoak the filters rather than using water.  It seems like we lose several bottles of wine waiting for the water from the filters to run through the system before we get to quality wine to then bottle.  Less waste maybe this way.   Just Mike's humble opinion.   Ciao!     Mike

 

 

Margaret Dimmick

dimmicks@earthlink.net

EarthLink Revolves Around You.

 

Top N Taste: March 25

We topped up and did some "quality control" tonight.  All the wines were very good. Some were excellent!

 

We started with the Super Tuscan and compared the stainless to a barrel.  Both were coming along very nicely. The barrel had the edge, but both were surprisingly good with not a hint of rotten egg!  Color was light.  We still expect to do a little more blending to fill out the flavors. Maybe a little merlot to accent the cherries and some petite verdot to give some body and deeper color.  Not sure it needs more cab.  The trial blending will be fun!

 

The WA Malbec was sound, but still had a light HSO2 rotten egg smell. Not bad, but another racking over copper is in order (sooner, than later, before MLF). Mike said he would coordinate racking.

 

The ID Malbec was the surprise of the night. Great flavor, dark color and a great finish. Not a hint of green or vine. The best Malbec we've done so far!!

 

The merlot was full flavored, rich and hot (alcoholic). Almost port-like.

 

The Williamson cab was very full flavored and had a great cabernet nose. A little rough/bitter (seeds), but the barrels will round it out over time. We all agree that the Williamson is "Reserve Worthy" this year. We'd like to hold over 30G or more.

 

The WA Clone-6 Cab was surprisingly closed. Not much nose. Dark fruit and a little bland. It will be interesting to watch it over time. It was disappointing.

 

We talked about storage for the summer. We all thought that the Super Tuscan was coming along nicely and was a good candidate for early bottling, which would solve our storage problem. We'll give it another month and make a decision. That would empty 2 barrels, and 1 or 2 stainless kegs, depending on the blend. The other option is to increase cooler capacity.

We talked about grape sources. Getting Wood River grapes is our highest priority. Lee will continue to try and talk with Neil. We also need to communicate with Roger how pleased we are with the grapes and that we want to get more this Fall.  We're unsure about RiverRock. It's a long way to go, and increases the number of crushes. Michele said she would be willing to pick-up the RiverRock Clone-6 for a year, if needed.  Once we loose RiverRock, we won't get it back. There's also potential for some Syrah and maybe Grenache.

 

We broke-down a 3G ID Malbec into 1G carboys and a platypus for topping both the ID and WA Malbec.  We used the Clone-6 cab for topping all of the cabs.

Bottles Clean, WA Malbec Racked

We met today and washed 13 cases of chard bottles in preperation for bottling.  We propose to filter and bottle on Tue March 3rd, mid day or in the evening. We'll set the time as we get closer. (Corks are in the winery on the West wall shelf.)

 

We racked the WA Malbec over copper again and added 20ppm Meta. We think this may be the final racking for it.

 

We topped and tasted barrels. All are coming along very well, but were down quite a ways.  We had some confusion about 1 barrel that wasn't marked but determined it was super-tuscan and that one of the 15G SS kegs was merlot.

 

We started topping the ID Cabernet with Malbec.

 

Troy

Sangiovese Saga

Today we filtered the Sangio and blended it 2:1 with some cabernet (~52G of Sangio and ~25G of Cabernet-Bin A) to make the "base" of a Super Tuscan wine. We're all very excited that we have been able to save the Sangiovese, which had a terrible case of rotten egg.  Here's the history of the 08 sangio.

 

The sangio was crushed on Oct 19, we added approx 10G of Clone 6 Cab must to help the flavor and low sugars. We pressed it on Oct 29th and got 70G of wine.  On Nov 10 we noticed a very strong rotten egg smell in the sangio. We aggressively racked it over copper 4 times in Nov and Dec and stored it in SS kegs until it stabilized in early January.  At this point we were down to about 54G of Sangio.

 

On Jan 18th we filtered the Sangio through a #3/coarse filter (and over copper). It took 2 sets of filters and we still didn't quite get through it all as the filters got clogged with junk.  The resulting sangio was a little lighter in color and flavor, but still good. Maybe a bit smoother.  We started going through a fine filter and decided to stop, as after going through the fine filter we had more of a watery sangio rose that none of us liked.

 

The resulting Super Tuscan wine is stored in Ray's 22G French, Troy's 15G Hungarian, Michele's 15G Hungarian and some carboys.  It will be interesting to taste the wine transform over the next 9 months in the barrels--as they do their magic.  We expect we will tweak the Super Tuscan blend before we bottle it, adding more cab, and/or some merlot and possibly some petit verdot.

 

Michele took her barrel of Super Tuscan home along with her 13G barrel of Cabernet, plus 2G of Merlot and Super Tuscan for topping. 

WA Malbec Racked Over Copper.

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. 

winery work on 12/23/08

Today we racked the WA Malbec over copper plate twice and added approx. 1/3 tsp. Meta to approx 19 gals.    It has a strong rotten egg smell, although Ray and Bob don't think it was as bad as the Sangio. 

 

Sangio smells OK and tastes a little tart, almost lemony/grassy.  We did not rack it any more.

 

We racked the SS 15.5 gal of Chard.  Tastes great! 

 

We topped the rest of the barrels. They all smell good. 

 

 

topping report

At 1pm today (12/10/08) Bob, Lee and Mike checked all the containers/barrels and topped the Malbec and Chard. 

 

The Chard (stainless steel keg) smells great, tastes good (could use a touch of wood) and containers are good to go.  We racked the 3 gal carboy and got rid of about a 1/2 gallon of goop in the bottom.  jTasted the 3 gal carboy and it is the same good taste as the stainless keg.

 

The Washington Malbec smells strong of rotten egg.  The barrel was down about 2 bottles.  Need to rack it over copper soon.  (did not smell the carboy of Wa/Malbec.  (Sorry)

 

The Idaho Malbec smells great, tastes great and has been topped (about 3/4 a bottle)

 

The bungs, bubblers and corks are looking good in everything else.  We did open one barrel of 08 cab and the level has not dropped since we racked on Sunday 9/07/08, so we left the other recently racked containers alone. 

 

Empty barrel smells really good.

 

One barrel that appeared to be slightly leaking still shows a stain, and I was able to feel about a drop of wet red wine on my finger after I ran it around the head, but it seems to be OK.  Maybe it has swollen and sealed itself. 

 

Bungs that were removed were meta'd and returned. 

 

I'll send an e-mail to Quality Nursery to inform David of the rotten egg smell in his Malbec. 

 

That's it!       Mike

 

 

Margaret Dimmick

dimmicks@earthlink.net

 

 

Cab & Malbec Racked Off The Gross Lees

The group met and racked the barrels of Merlot and Cabernet off their gross lees today. We spot checked the sugars and the merlot was down to .994 and the cab was at .996. Both down a little since we pressed, but could use to drop a little further.  The cab had considerable sediment on the bottom and we lost 2 gallons or so in each barrel.   Troy's 15G Hungarian was emptied out while racking the cab, and needs a meta rinse.  It will stay empty until the Sangio is ready.

 

We re-racked the sangio over copper again. The sangio continues to smell better. The stainless kegs that have been racked once more than the others had very little to no rotten egg smell!  We are delighted to be rid of the nasty smell and we plan to filter the sangio in the next week or so to (hopefully) keep it from coming back.  Some of the sangio still had considerable gunky-ness settled to the bottom as the precipitants have been coming out from adding extra meta and racking over the copper.  We've been aggressivly discarding any sediment when we rack.

 

We plan to keep the sangio in stainless kegs and glass until we are sure it is "sound", so that it doesn't contaminate a barrel. Once we're confident it is good (a couple weeks after filtering) we'll combine it with some of the cabernet to make the base of the Super Tuscan.  We tried some blending today and about a 60% cabernet and 40% sangio was good. Could use a shot of Petit Verdot too.  I think the first Super Tuscan had approx 10% petit verdot.

 

The group reviewed the Fall expenses and Troy will finish the accounting and get the results out to the group.  This year we crushed 5,800 pounds of grapes, compared to 4,100 pounds last year. Both this year and last year we had 6 crushings and 5 pressings.  We pressed out 376 gallons of wine this year!

 

The group decided to create a new category of capital equipment called "Group Capital" that we split the cost of evenly. New items for the category are microbins and the new bottler. We decided to not go back and try and account for previous items, but just keep track of new items from here forward.

Cab and Merlot are Pressed!

We pressed out the Wood River Merlot and the Williamson Cabernet today in about 4.5 hours. 1,000lbs of Merlot and 2,000lbs of Cab.  Wow, that's a lot of grapes!! It's great to finally have all of them pressed out. With the high alcohol levels it was a real struggle getting through fermentation this year.  The merlot and cabernet are around .998 brix and still showing signs of fermenting a bit.  We'd like to see them drop to .995 or .990 over the next week.  We'll measure brix again when we rack them in a week or two.

 

The merlot was very tasty.  Big flavors and color from a full MONTH on the skins. Still lots of fruit--or maybe a little sweetness. It's hard to say.  The Cabernet was on the skins for about 3 weeks and was a bit harsh/bitter and alcoholic--maybe from the extra exposure to seeds from the way the grapes got crushed.  We pressed the cabernet pretty lightly, trying to avoid a rise in PH and to minimize the hard tannins.  We pressed the Merlot a little harder.  We got 88G of Merlot out of 114G of must. More than we expected. A 77% yield.  Maybe we had more merlot than we thought?  We got 84G of Cabernet out of 246G of must--34% yield.  Much less than we expected, although it was pressed very lightly.  Maybe we had less Cabernet than we thought?

 

We racked the Clone-6 cab off it's gross lees and it tastes very good. We racked about 1/2 the Sangio over copper.  The Sangio is smelling better, and is tasting better too. Still a little ways to go before we can filter it and call it "good".

 

Photos are uploaded to the group's 2008 online photo album.

 

 

Pressing On Tuesday

We checked the Merlot and Cab this afternoon and they are all at or below zero brix. Yea!  We plan on pressing on Tuesday, starting at 2pm.

 

Cab Bin A: .998

Cab Bin B: .998

Cab Bin C: 0

Merlot: .998

Fermentation Update: Looking Good!

Lee and I measured the wines today at 2:00.  Merlot:  68 and 0.5,  Cab A: 66 and 0.5,  Cab B: 66 and 1.0,  Cab C:  67 and 1.2.  As a little experiment, we filtered a sample of Cab A though a gold coffee filter and measured Brix as 0.   Fermentation still going on and taste is good. 

 

Bob  

Brix Update

Just finished measuring at 3:00. Merlot: 66 and 2.2 temp and brix respectively, Cab A: 64 and 2.5, Cab B: 65 and 2.7, Cab C: 66 and 3.5. Lee had punched them down earlier. All tasted pretty good.

Caps were solid. Still foaming, too. We thought they looked OK and fermation still going on.

Bob

Cabernet Brix Adjusted

Bob, Troy and Lee checked the fermentation status. The merlot continues to make good progress and has a solid cap. Merlot flavor and color is very good. The two smaller bins of cab continue to be slow with temps dropping a degree.

 

We discussed options and the unavoidable fact is that the yeast is unable to continue to ferment because the alcohol levels are reaching the 16% toxicity range for the Pastur Red yeast. The dropping must temps are of concern because we cannot easily get the temps back up after they drop below the min level of 64 degrees.

 

Since the brix adjustment with water is working well on the merlot we decided to do it on the cabernet. Not much water is needed and the benefits are much higher than the risk of a little dilution.

 

We added approx 1.3G of 105 degree water to each small bin and 2.6G of 105 degree water to the large bin. We hydrated and added 3 paks of Pastur Red yeast to each small bin and 5 paks to the large bin. Each has been stirred well and put to bed.

 

Cab Bin A: 64 degrees, 2.75 brix. Dropped to 2.5 brix after water added.

Cab Bin B: 65 degrees, 3+ brix. Dropped to 3 brix after water added.

Cab Bin C: 65 degrees, 4 brix. Dropped to 3+ brix after water added.

Merlot 68 degrees, 3 brix.

 

Bob and/or Lee will punch down once during the day on Wed. Bob and/or Troy will take brix and temp readings, either mid-day or in the evening. Watch for the daily report.

Merlot Fermentation Imroved!

Troy, Bob and Lee checked progress tonight and the merlot is doing very well. Fermentation has definitely increased with bix dropping more than in the last week!  The temp has also come up from 68 to 69 degrees and the cap was very solid.  Taste is less sweet with very good flavors. :-D  We were all very happy with the results.  We hydrated and added 5 paks of RC212 yeast to the Meta to help ensure good yeast to finish fermentation.

 

Cabs continue fermenting with the big bin having the densest cap and the smaller bins having a softer cap.  Temps in the smaller bins dropped a little from 65-66 degrees to just under 65 degrees. Bin A has made no progress in Brix. Between the softer cap, lower temps and no change in brix on Cab Bin A the smaller bins of Cabernet appear to be slowing down fermentation. A reading of 2.75-3 Brix would have the Cab around the 16% alcohol--the toxic level for the yeast, which Bin A and B are nearing.

 

Merlot 66-99 degrees. 3.5 Brix -- DOWN FROM 4.75 BRIX

Cab Bin A 65- degrees. 3 Brix  -- NO PROGRESS

Cab Bin B 65- degrees. 3.75- Brix  -- DOWN FROM 5 BRIX

Cab Bin C 65+ degrees. 4.75 Brix -- DOWN FROM 5 BRIX

 

We will take another reading on Tuesday. If the Cab in Bin A hasn't made progress, then we will have to take steps to keep the fermentation from becoming stuck. Since the water addition worked well for the Merlot, we may try it with the Cabernet. The amount of water needed is pretty small: 2.8G for the big bin and 1.4G for each of the small bins.

Sangio Much Improved

We racked the Sangio over copper again on Sunday. It smelled much much better. :)  We are optimistic that it has turned the corner!

 

We added 20ppm of meta before racking. Racked over copper 1 way, and then back into the SS kegs, breaking 1 down into carboys and a platypus since we were out of Sangio for topping.  We discarded the bottom of the keg if it contained any sediment.

 

We will let it sit for a few more days and check it again. Once we are free of the rotten egg smell we will filter it to remove any elemental sulfur and yeast cells that may cause it to come back.

 

 We were initially going to add some cabernet right away (once it was pressed), but we will want to give the sangio a month or so to make sure the problem is solved before doing any blending.

 

 

Merlot Brix Reduced

The group met to discuss how to handle the Merlot and cab to avoid a stuck fermentation.  We took measurements of the brix and temp of all the bins.

 

Merlot: 5.5 brix, 66 degrees

Cab bin C 5 brix, 65 degrees

Cab bin B 5 brix, 66 degrees

Cab bin A 3 brix, 65 degrees

 

The cab continues to ferment some, with one bin dropping more than the other. Interestingly it is the bin with the higher PH that wasn't adjusted with acid. The Merlot hadn't changed brix in the last 24h, and only 1/2 brix in the previous 24h. There was still a cap and foam to indicate activity, but it has really slowed down.  Temps were at the low end of the spectrum for the first yeast pitched but well within the range for the EC1118 yeast. This supports the concern that fermentation is stalling and therefore not generating much heat.   

 

We talked about the fact that the EC1118 yeast hadn't taken over. It seems that you can't establish a second yeast after the first is going--something we were not aware of when we started. If we would have started with EC1118 yeast we likely would be OK right now.

 

We discussed the options of letting the Merlot sit for another day or two and seeing if it made progress. However there is a concern that if the temps drop below the minimum that we won't be able to warm the must up enough to get it going again because of the colder weather (low 30, high 50)

 

We decided to add the minimum amount of water to the Merlot to see if it would improve the "living conditions" for the yeast and restart it. We added 9G (with no acid correction) of 100-104 degree water (the temps recommended for yeast hydration) to the Merlot must and stirred vigorously to mix it up and get the yeast stimulated.  The ending measurements were 4.75 Brix and 68-69 degree must.

 

We covered the bins with several painting tarp/cloths to try and improve heat retention. We will measure the temp and brix and check for fermentation indications on Monday, as well as add a booster of the initial yeast used on the Merlot, which was RC212.

 

We will continue to monitor the cabernet. We decided to not add water to the cab yet, as we wanted to see if it worked on the merlot first. Plus the cab was still showing some signs of fermenting and lowering brix.  We did not press the merlot or cab because we want to have skins contact with the water added.  Plus the skins do give some amount of nutrient to the fermentation which we thought would help it progress better than being off the skins.

 

Wine Dilution Details

The following wine website has a handy calculator for adjusting the brix of the must. Both adding sugar to increase the brix and adding water to dilute the brix.

 

http://vinoenology.com/calculators/chaptalization-and-water-dilution/

 

If we targeted a brix of 27.5 (alcohol level of 15.6--within the 16% limit of pastur red  and RC112), here is the amount of water we would have to add.

 

Cabernet:

256G total must volume

29 initial brix

27.5 target brix

15.72G of water needed to reduce brix to target level (5G needed if the target brix is 28.5% or 16.3% alcohol)

 

Merlot:

114G total must volume

30.5 initial brix

28.5 target brix

14G of water needed to reduce brix to target level (9G needed if the target brix is 28.5 or 16.3% alcohol)

Prepared For Pressing

Fermentation is still steady on both the Merlot and Cabernet, but has slowed down to 1/2 brix a day the last few days.  Both are nearing alcohol toxicity for the Pastur Red yeast. Additional EC 1118 yeast has been added, which has an alcohol tolerance of 18%.   We will have to monitor both very closely for a stuck fermentation.

 

The merlot started at 30.5 brix and has been on the skins 22 days and is around 5.5 brix. The final alcohol level is estimated at 17.5% and the current alcohol is around 15%. 

 

The cabernet started at 29 brix has been on the skins 16 days and is around 5 brix. The final alcohol level is estimated at 16.75% and the current alcohol is around 14%.

 

We have 114G of Merlot must. Assuming 63%-65% yield with a moderate pressing we will get 70-75G. That will fill both of Mike's 2 30G hungarian barrels plus 10-15G carboys.

 

We have 246G of Cabernet must. Assuming a 60-63% yeild with very light pressing we will get 147G-155G (130G barrels and 15-25G carboys). Note: We are pressing lightly because the harder you press the higher the PH, and we want to keep the PH down as much as possible.

 

Bin B & C of the cabernet have had acid adjustment to reduce the PH. Bin A has had no adjustment and we plan to mix it into the Sangio--once we're confident the H2SO problem is solved.  We should mark the barresl that get the cab pressed from Bin A so we can keep track of it.  There will be approximatly 42G, which would fill Bob's 20G french and Ray's 22G french.

 

The following barrels are clean and ready for the Merlot and Cabernet.

 

- Mike's 30G hungarian #1 (Merlot)

- Mike's 30G hungarian #2 (Merlot)
- Ray's new 30G French (Cab)
- Bob's 20G French (Cab Bin A)
- Ray's 22G French (Cab Bin A)
- Bob's 15G American (Cab)
- Michele's 13G French  (Cab)

- Troy's 15G hungarian (Cab)

- Michele's 15G hungarian (Cab)

 

The group is undecided about when to press.  We are discussing the pros and cons of pressing before the wines are "dry".   The grapes have been on the skins long enough to get color and flavor extraction (22 days for the merlot and 16 days for the cab). Usually we would let them stay until the cap is ready to fall. However, there is some concern that the high alcohol levels will extract harsh/bitter tannins from the seeds if allowed to have contact for very long, especially on the Cabernet because more seeds got exposed during crush than normal.  Pressing is currently scheduled for Sunday at 1:30pm. We may press nothing, everything, or part of the cab and leave some of the cab for another week.

Sangio 2nd Racking

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The Sangio still has a strong rotten egg smell, but is definitely better than it was--we continue to be hopeful that we can fix it.  We added 20ppm meta and then racked it over copper.  We will wait several days and check it again.  Once we feel it is better we plan to run it through a fine filter to remove any "elemental sulfur" that has precipitated out of the wine.  There was already some amount of sediment on the bottom of the SS kegs that we threw out. We ended up topping with clone-6 cab as we didn't have enough sangio to fully fill all 4 of the 15G tanks.  After the next racking we'll switch to topping with the Williamson cabernet that will be used in the Super Tuscan.

 

Merlot is at 6 brix and Cab was around 7 brix. We plan to press them in 3 days on Sunday, around 1pm in the afternoon.

 

We put proxyclean in any barrel that had a sulfur wick burned in it.  They will get a meta/citric rinse before we fill them with cab on Sunday.  Several of the barrels were leaking and are being hydrated.  The 2 30G Hungarian barrels need a good meta/citric rinse.

Yeast booster added

Hydrated 6 packages of 1118 yeast in 2C 110 degree water and added 3/4 of it to the large bin-C of Cab and the other 1/4 to the smaller Bin-B of cab. Bin A got a booster yesterday as did the Merlot.

Both cab bins (B & C) were around 9.5 Brix tonight.

Clone 6 Press. Wines racked

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We pressed the WA Clone 6 cab tonight, it had been on the skins for 21 days and the cap was very soggy. It has great color and flavors! :-D  We pressed moderately hard and got 33G of wine from 52G of must--about a 63% yield. (Note: Earlier we had moved about 10G of Clone6 must into the sangio for co-fermentation.)  The Clone 6 is in Troy's 26G American barrel.

 

The Merlot is at 10 brix, compared to 12 brix 5 days ago and the Cab at 11 brix, compared with 23 brix 5 days ago.  Since the merlot is fermenting slowly we added 3 more packets of hydrated 1118 yeast to give it a boost. We also added about 2 packages to Bin A of the Williamson Cab. We'd like to add more to the other cab bins--we just ran out.  We expect to press the cab and merlot on Saturday and let them finish any last fermentation off of the skins and seeds, to help avoid harsh flavors from the high alcohol levels on the seeds.  That will give us 15 days on the skins for the Williamson cab and 22 days on the skins for the Merlot.

 

We racked the Chard, ID Malbec and Sangio.  The Malbec was good, the Chard tasted a little different (not bad, just different) but the Sangio had a very very bad case of rotten egg smell. :-( We racked it out over copper and then put it back into 4 15G SS kegs and a carboy.  We'll rack it again over copper in another week or two, and add some meta.  We are hopeful that we can clean it up, but we agreed we didn't want to blend in any Williamson cabernet until we were sure it was clean. So we'll need to keep track of the "uncorrected" Williamson cabernet with the higher PH in the meantime.

 

The 2 small Hungarian barrels that had the Sangio have some residual rotten egg smell. We will clean them good with Proxy Clean before putting more wine back in them.

 

 

Checking PH After Adjustment

Ray got some more calibration solution for the PH meter and we checked the PH on the Williamson cabernet.   The control sample (bin A) that had no adjustment was at PH 3.7 (it will get blended with the low PH Sangio).  Bin B was now 3.5-3.6 (reading vacillated) and the large bin C was at 3.5.  Those are good numbers and we are very happy with them. We'll continue to monitor the PH through fermentation.

 

We checked the sugars on the wines still fermenting:

Clone-6 Cab .996 brix  (will press in 4 days)

Merlot 12 brix

Williamson cab ranged from 23 to 26 brix, with the higher sugar in the big bin.

Correcting the Cabernet

Troy, Lee and I met again last night to measure again the pH of the cab must and also to take a TA measurement. The pH numbers came in at 3.8, 3.8, and 3.7 for the two small bins and the large one, respectively. As Troy stated in his email, we'd like them to be at most 3.6 and preferably below that. The TA (titratable acids) came in at just 8.6, 8.2 and 7.9 for the three. That's quite a spread. I don't think that we stirred the first batch well enough before taking a sample. But the numbers are slightly w/in the recommended limit of 9. After some discussion, we thought that if we could bring the pH down about 1 to 2 units, we'd be OK. Since we're not very experienced at this, we discounted the 2 number. We're a little hesitant to do too much too soon. The discussion turned 1 or 1 1/2 units of adjustment and we settled on the 1 1/2 pH adjustment number for our target. Well, today I set out to buy the appropriate amount of tartaric acid and all I could come up with was just enough for a 1 unit adjustment. The brew shops were virtually sold out of the stuff. We'll have to do a check in a few days to see if more is available and if we want to add more. Lee, Bob and I added the acid to the must this afternoon and we'll probably measure again tomorrow. Lee pitched the Pasteur yeast this morning and it took hold immediately. We'll add the EC1118 high alcohol yeast in a couple days.The fermentation is under way.

Cabernet PH Adjustment Information

Some research findings on adjusting PH.  But before we decide to adjust, we should verify the PH reading again. Our last PH adjustment didn't work out well partially because of a bad PH reading because the meter was going out. However, we are not surprised by the high PH reading because of the unusually high sugar/brix in the cabernet.  We should do a 2 point calibration with the meter. We should stir the must well and then filter some juice thru a coffee filter to ensure it's clean. We may also want to measure T.A.

 

The risks of not adjusting the PH are:

1. The wine will loose color.

2. The wine will become microbally unstable and will spoil.

3. To protect the wine we will have to use very high levels of Sulfites.

 

Adjusting PH:

The book "Techniques in Home Winemaking" advises against using acid blends because they contain citric acid which will make the wine taste sour. Instead use Tartaric acid.

 

You adjust the PH based on the volume of wine, not must.  In general estimate gallons of wine = 60% of total must volume.

 

We estimated 71G of must in each microbin. That would be about 42G of wine, or 159 liters.

We estimated 104G of must in the macrobin. That would be 62G of wine, or 235 liters.

 

We estimate that the average PH of the combined wines will be around 3.8, realizing it will increase by 0.1 to 0.2 after Malolactic Fermentation. We would like to get it down to 3.6, but may want to be conservative and just shoot for  PH of 3.7. Although remember that PH will rise again after MLF. So a 0.2 adjustment may be the minimum we want to do. We will have to discuss the options and decide. In general the less we do to the wine, the better.

 

PH Adjustment Formula & Amounts:

1 gram per liter of wine reduces the PH by 0.1 units.

 

159 grams of tartaric acid would lower the PH in the a small microbins by 0.1.

235 grams would lower PH in the large macrobin by 0.1.

 

The references state there are 5 grams of tartaric acid in 1tsp. So 0.2 tsp = 1 gram.

 

SMALL MICROBIN: 0.2 * 159 = 31.8 tsp (10.6 TBSP or 5.3 OZ) to adjust PH down to 3.7.

 

LARGE MACROBIN: 0.2 * 235 = 47 tsp (15 2/3 TBSP or 7.8 OZ).to adjust PH down to 3.7.

 

 

Last Crush Of The 08 Season

Ray and Bob went out to Williamsons and got 2,000lbs of cabernet. The fruit was picked that morning and into the afternoon and put into fruit boxes. Approx 20 pounds per box, and 100 boxes! All 100 boxes stacked into Troy's trailer with no problem.

Berries were small size, and smaller clusters. Seeds were evenly brown and stems were turning brown too. The fruit came in with some small leaves mixed into it. We picked them out as well as possible, but quite a few of the smaller pieces ended up in the must. The leaves were mostly dry.

We used the motorized crusher rented from BrewCon, which went fast. We crushed all 2,000lbs in just under 2 hours. Much faster than if we had to use the hand crank crusher.  We did several adjustments on the machine to try and get the crush size right. We may have ended up too small because the grapes were crushed/squashed more than usual which exposed the seeds. It also had a side-effect of more "empty" skins were ejected out with the stems (we estimate 50# of skins went into the trash).

We measured 246G of must total, split into 2 microbins (71G each) and 1 macro bin (104G). Volume of must was calculated using the following formula, which we've used several times now. We added just under 3TBSP of meta to sanatize the microbins and 4TBSP + 1tsp to the larger macrobin.

(Depth In Inches of the Must) *(L X W of microbin which is 43*43) * 7.48 / 12 * 12 * 12

We factored out the constants and simplified the equasion to:

Depth in Inches * 8.0038 = Gallons Of Must

The cabernet sugars were again higher than expected, with the PH coming in higher than we wanted. We sampled each bin and they had slightly different numbers, with an average of around 29 Brix and 3.8PH. We may want to do some acid adjustments on the must, but we agree we want to be cautious as our acid adjustments on the Chard in the past hasn't worked out very well. More investigation and discussion is needed. We will need to switch over again to the EC 1118 yeast to handle the higher alcohol. We might consider starting with the Pastur Red as we like the results--but we will need to have some of the EC1118 to finish the job.

MicroBin 1 29.5 Brix, 3.7 PH

MicroBin 2: 30 Brix, 3.9 PH

MacroBin 1: 28.5 Brix, 3.7 PH

We measured the Brix on the Clone 6, and it was around 3. It was at 10 Brix 3 days ago and will probably go another 4-5 days before the cap falls.

The day before we added 2 more TBSP of nutrient to the merlot, which is fermenting well but still very sweet.

We noticed the Sangio wine in the 5G carboy showed asignificant color gradient. We think the darker color on top is the cabernet that is still fermenting (it had higher sugars) and the lighter red below is the sangio. A very interesting effect. We should take a photo! (Photos from today have been uploaded to our shared online photo album.)

Sangio and ID Malbec Pressed

We pressed the Wood River Malbec and WA Sangiovese last night, Oct 28 2008. Both were fermented out with a soggy cap.

 

The Malbec was crushed on 10/18 and was on the skins 10 days. Color was immensely dark purple and flavor was very good--maybe the best Malbec we've had at this point. No hint of green flavors this year.  We got 48G of Malbec, pressing only lightly, and filled Lee's 30G French barrel, a 15G stainless keg, 2G carboys and 1G platypus.   

 

The Sangio was crushed on Oct 19th,  9 days on the skins.  The color was a lighter red color, until the pressed wine which was much darker and had much more flavor.  Flavors were a bit under-developed because of the low Brix, but it really picked up a lot of flavor the last couple days of fermentation. The Sangio included about 10G of clone-6 cabernet must that was co-fermented to help increase the low Sangio sugars and add extra flavor from the Cab skins (estimate 10% cab co-fermented). 

 

We got 70G of Sangio wine, more than expected because of the added 10G of cabernet must and we pressed very hard to get more flavors and tannins out of the lighter flavored must (WOW! What a difference in color and flavor.)  We put the Sangio into Troy's 15G Hungarian barrel, Michele's 15G hungarian barrel, 2 15G SS kegs, 9G carboys and 1G Platypus.  Michele will pick up her barrel and some carboys after the first racking in a week or so.

  

The Clone-6 Cab cap is starting to be less firm and the color/flavor is fanstastic! We want to keep the wine in contact with skins as long as possible to increase flavor/color/tannins. We moved it into the 2 plastic blue barrels to free the microbins up for Roger's cab that will be coming later this week (ETA Thursday 10/30).

 

The is Merlot fermenting well now with a very dense cap. Still very very sweet.

 

 

malbec & sangio ready to press

We checked sugars tonight.

malbec .996
sangio .997
clone-6 cab 10
merlot 30

We will press the sangio & malbec on tue. at 630pm

Merlot is starting slow. We added 6 pkgs of EC 1118 yeast & 2 tbsp
nutrient, as the initial starter got made with the 212 yeast..

Merlot Crushed Friday Oct 24

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Ray and Lee picked up a macro-bin of Merlot from Dennis at Wood River Friday morning .Estimate is for 900 pounds.  They also brought back an empty Macro Bin from Dennis to use for fermentation. We need to decide if we will keep it, or return it. Cost is $150.

 

Sugars were much higher than anticipated on the Merlot, coming in at 30.5 Brix! PH was 3.6, which is good (with the abnormally high brix we thought PH may have been too high).  We switched from Pastur Red to Lavin 1118 yeast, which can handle up to 18% alcohol. (30.5 brix will be about 17% alcohol!--good thing we are blending it).

 

Ray estimated we had 114G of must based on converting cubic feet in the macrobin to gallons, which he sanitized with 4.75 TBSP of meta (1/8tsp per gallon of must).  A note on our meta application this year vs. last year. Last year I believe we added meta based on gallons of finished wine. This year we are adding meta based on gallons of must.  The general range of SO2 application in the books is 50ppm to 100ppm.  We should sit down and figure out how the change in meta application will impact our SO2 ppm of finished wine.

 

Troy

Finished Bottling 07 Wines

Bottled the last 2 wines for the year. A Cab/Malbec blend and a Syrah/Malbec blend. About 22 cases total.  We expect 1,000lbs of Wood River Merlot on Friday in it's own bin, plus an extra bin for fermenting Roger's cab.  We can borrow buy the extra bin from Dennis.  The cab from Roger is expected some time next week, weather depending.

 

We did some other winery work while we bottled.

1. Racked the 08 WA Malbec from SS and glass into Lee's 15G barrel plus some carboys.

 

2. Transferred about 10G of Clone-6 Cab into the Sangiovase to help offset the low Sangio sugar levels and add some cab skins for co-fermentation flavor.  Lee had inoculated both earlier in the day: The cab with 5 of the Pastur Red yeast (to handle the higher alcohol) and the Sangio with 5 of the Lavin 212 yeast.  The ID Malbec is now fermenting strongly in the 2 plastic barrels w/ liners. Mike moved them on top of some foam to get them off the garage floor and keep them warmer for fermentation as it is getting cooler outside.

 

3. Got started cleaning barrels, starting with the ones that are needed first. Any barrel that had a sulphur wick burnt in it or had any off smells will get a 24hr soak with Proxy Clean followed by a meta/citric rinse. Otherwise they just got a meta/citric rinse and are upside down. Here are the ones that have been treated so far. The proxy soaked ones need to get emptied and meta/citric rinsed tonight.

 

• Lee's 15G French got a meta/citric rinse and now has the WA Malbec in it.
• Troy's 15G Hungarian got a meta/citric rinse and is upside down drying.
• Troy's 26G American got a meta/citric rinse and is upside down drying.
• Bob's 15G American is in a proxy soak because of the seep on the lower front head. We need to rub some wax into it or use some epoxy (we have another container) to try and seal it up.
• Lee's 30G French is in a proxy soak.
• Michele's 15G hungarian is leaking so it will be hydrated and then proxy soaked.

 

2008 Barrel Plan

• WA Malbec into Lee's 15G French barrel
• WA C6 Cab into Troy's 26G American barrel
• Sangio into Troy's 15G Hungarian barrel plus Michele's 15G Hungarian barrel
• ID Malbec into Lee's 30G French barrel
• Merlot into Mike's 2 30G Hungarian barrels
• Roger's cab into
  - Ray's new 30G French
  - Bob's 20G French
  - Ray's 22G French
  - Bob's 15G American
  - Michele's 13G French

 

 

 

Adjusting Sangio For Low Sugar

I looked at several references on how to handle the lower brix (21.5) of the WA Sangiovase.  In general the minimum acceptable is 21-22 Brix, so we are in that range and are OK.  We have several options.

 

1. Do nothing. The wine will get blended with more ripe cabernet when we make our Super Tuscan, and that will balance everything out.

 

2. Mix in a couple of 5G buckets of the Clone-6 cabernet into the Sangio for fermentation. That will raise the sugars some now and give extra co-fermentation advantages. The wine will get blended with more cab when we bottle the SUper Tuscan, which will round out the sugars and acids.

 

3. Mix in some sugar water. This raises the brix, which doesn't add any flavor just increases the alcohol level.

 

Option #1 is OK with me, but I think option #2 is better. The Clone-6 cab has high sugars (27 brix) and the co-fermentation with the cab skins will have some added benefits to the super tuscan flavors (co-fermentation is common for Super Tuscans).  I'd rather avoid adding sugar. The alcohol level will be plenty high by the time it's blended.

 

No matter which option we do, we need to press early because the sangio seeds are partially green, so we want to avoid extended contact with them. A faster fermentation and earlier pressing would help limit contact. So we should switch the yeast to Pastur Red and plan to press after a week.

 

We can talk about the options tonight and make a decision.

 

Troy

WA Grapes Crushed

Mike picked up the WA grapes on Sunday and drove them back to Boise. We got 625lbs of Sangiovase from Quality Nursery in Zillah and 500+lbs of Clone-6 Cabernet from RiverRock vineyard near Walla Walla. Quality Nursery packaged up the Sangiovase in a large cardboard box lined with heavy plastic, and the grapes were in good condition when we got them home with little crushed at the bottom. RiverRock picked the Clone-6 Cab into our small Microbin.  Both grapes came to use very very clean with very few leaves.  The Sangio berries were very large berry tight clusters and the Clone-6 was small sparse berries.  Both were very tasty! :-D

 

We crushed Sunday night using the electric crusher rented from Brewcon for $50.  The electric crusher worked great and chewed through the 1,200lbs of grapes in no time at all.  We defiantly want to use it for the TON of Roger's cabernet if possible.  The Sangiovase and Cabernet are both in Microbins for fermentation. We scooped the Wood River malbec out of 1 microbin and put it into 2 large plastic bins with fermentation liners so it would be easier to crush into the microbin.  We had lots of help from friends and neighbors that came by for the crush and cleaning out the extra stems that made their way into the must.  The stem-free must will make for nice clean flavors in the wine without any green stem taste.

 

The clone-6 cabernet was good and ripe and seeds were evenly brown.  Brix were a bit higher than expected, because our row is next to an access road in the middle of the vineyard and so it gets more sun. Brix were a solid 27 and PH was a bit high at 3.7.  (A spot check by Dennis at the vinyard a row or more over showed 25.5 brix.)  The Sagiovase was not quite ripe. Seeds were just starting to turn brown and the grape pulp was still tight around them. Although there weren't any "Green" flavors in the Sangiovase grape taste.  Brix was low at 21.5 with a high acids and a PH of 3.3.  We will have to decide if we want to do any modification to the Sangio to balance acids or sugars.  Since it is going to be blended with Cabernet, we might be fine as it will balance out the wine. We'll have to see what the numbers are on Roger's cab that we are going to blend with. It might work out by itself without any additions.

 

Must was sanitized with about 2.5TBSP meta for the cab and 3.33TBSP meta for the Sangiovase. Lee pulled out juice from each to do yeast starters before they were sanitized with the meta and will do a starter in 48 hours.  We are going to use the Lalvin RC 212 Bourgovin yeast on the Malbec and the Sangiovase because the Pastur Red yeast we normally use wasn't available.  We do have some Pastur Red and will use 5 packages for the Clone-6 cabernet as Pastur Red handles higher alcohol levels than Lavin RC212 (which peters out around 14% alcohol and 27 Brix will get closer to 15%).

 

 

WA Malbec Pressed

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We Pressed the 250lbs of Malbec from Zillah, WA last night. Brix were down to around 0.5 but the cap was still firm. Great flavor and color. Very promising.

We got about 20G of wine with a moderate pressing. The free-run was very fruit forward and even a little sweet while the pressed wine picked up tannins and became more tart. The wine is in a 15G stainless keg and glass carboys with bubblers or breathable bungs while we wait to bottle the rest of our wine. We will rack it into Lee's 15G French barrel after it settles for 2 weeks.

Malbec at 5 Brix

Fermentation on the Prosser Malbec is coming along very well. It has been in contact with the skins for 9 days now. Sugars are down to 5 brix. Color is amazing! Flavor still has some fruit sweetness and is very smooth.

 

We plan to press on Thursday into a stainless tank to finish fermentation. We're not pressing early on the Malbec this year as we don't taste any green flavors like we've had from the Idaho Malbec. will be interesting to see how it develops.   We aren't putting it into a barrel right now because the 15G barrels all have wine in them yet.

 

The fermentation liner bottom failed in the blue barrel. For the first couple days we just stirred around it, and then we took it out last night. I contacted Debra at Nampa Brewers who said she would replace it and contact her distributor about the failure.

 

Troy

 

New Barrel and Bottler

I just received a barrel to replace the 22 gal recoop that had been leaking and had been tainting the red wine.  This time I tried a different company, but I got essentially the same product.  The new company is 'Barrel Builders" from, I believe, St Helena, CA.  It is a 30 gal reprocessed French oak barrel, medium toast.  It cost $308 delivered.  Upon inspection, it appears rougher on the inside that the ReCoop product and the staves are thicker.  Perhaps less wood was removed during the refurb process.  The rep at BB said that they use a router rather than a plane to remove expose new surface in the barrel.  Don't know if that makes a difference.  It was used for red wine, obviously, since there are still stains around the bung hole.  The barrel is now in Lee's garage, ready to go to work.  The company also sells new American (Minnesota) oak barrels for $250.  They say that the American oak works very well for the heavier red wines such as Cab or Malbec.  We might consider one of those next.

 

The bottler came mail order from EC Kraus.  I purchased it blindly with absolutely no information as to how it worked, its quality or reliability, or anything else.  I just knew that a new bottler was badly needed and the sooner the better.  The description said that it was perfect for 50 to 500 gal batches.  Good enough for me.  It was delivered for $131.  I subsequently bought a couple hoses to fit it for another $22, but the hoses have large enough diameter and are long enough for multiple uses around the winery.  The first bottling proved that it probably was worth the investment.  It filled about 25 cases in an hour with only one person operating it. That should satisfy our needs for the foreseeable future. 

Malbec Fermentation Update

Mike brought back 250lbs of Malbec back from Zillah Washington and it was crushed on Monday into the small blue barrel with a fermentation liner and sanitized with approx 1 tbsp of meta (there was about 20-25G of must which will press out to 15-20G of juice).  Lee pulled some juice out before we added the meta to do a starter. He started it right away, but we wanted to wait 24-48h before adding to give the meta time to work. In the mean time the starter fizzled out.  :(  This hasn't happened in the past because we didn't pull the juice until we were ready for the starter (24 hours after crush). So we either need to be ready to add the starter earlier or to delay waiting to pull the starter juice.

 

I did a second starter Wednesday evening with 4pkgs of Pastur Red yeast and once it was going added a tbsp of nutrient and stirred it into the must at about 11pm. We will need to check it today and see if it is taking. The weather has cooled off so we may get a slower fermentation. We should probably get the bin off of the floor so it stays warmer (up on a foam block or rubber mat).  Also, the small bin is over 75% full which means the cap has the potential to push out. If it gets close then we will need to move it to a larger barrel. That may be a bit difficult because of needing a fermentation liner. We have a second we can use. We will order more.

 

Time to start the punch down rotations! Everyone please coordinate with Lee and help manage the punch downs.

 

Troy

2008 Wine

Here is a list of the grapes we are set-up to get this Fall, and which barrels I propose putting them in.  By dropping the dropping the Viognier and Syrah and scaling back our Malbec order from Dennis to a more reasonable level we have enough capacity to take all 2,000 pounds of Roger's cabernet! That will give us enough to do some great Cabernet blends this year and hold over 60G for a Reserve Cabernet.  Yea!

 

Take a quick look at the numbers, volumes and barrels and see if it looks right.

 

Troy

 

Wood River

 

- 500lbs Chard

 

- 1,000lbs Merlot

- 500 lbs Malbec

Williamson

- 2,000lbs Clone 2 Cabernet

RiverRock (WA)

- 400 lbs Clone 6 Cabernet

Prosser

- 250 lbs Malbec

- 700 lbs Sangiovese

 

Barrels:

2 15G Stainless Kegs: Chardonnay

Mike's 30G Hungarian #1: Wood River Merlot

Mike's 30G Hungarian #2: Wood River Merlot

Lee's 30G French: Wood River Malbec

Troy's 26G American: Williamson Cabernet

Ray's 30G New: Williamson Cabernet

Bob's 20G French: WA Clone 6 Cab

Ray's 22G French : Williamson Cabernet

Bob's 15G American: Williamson Cabernet

Troy's 15G Hungarian: Prosser Sangiovese (plus carboys/stainless for extra 10G)

Lee's 15G French: Prosser Malbec

Tom&Michel 15G Hungarian: Prosser Sangiovese (Moved to Michele's house after fermentation)

Tom&Michele 13G French: Williamson Cabernet (Moved to Michele's house after fermentation)

Chard racked off the gross lees

The chard was done fermenting and on Thursday we racked it out of the 60G fermentation barrel into 2 15G stainless steel kegs and and a 3G glass carboy.  We took a quick taste and liked what we have. It has lots of  body and acids, but isn't that tart squirt flavor.  We look forward to getting it into a bottle earlier this year to capture that clean fruit taste.  We'll let it settle for 3 weeks and then rack it again off of the settled lees and yeast cells.

 

The stainless kegs and carboys have breathable bungs on them so they can finish the last bit of fermentation.  The bungs are very tight and take extra effort to make sure they are in. We have moved to the larger size bung to make sure the bung doesn't get pushed out like the smaller one did last year.

 

The 60G barrel was rinsed clean and then a meta/citric rinse to help inhibit bacterial growth. In a few days once it is good and dry we will want to burn a sulphur wick and close it up.

 

07 Magnafique Bottled

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We bottled our 07 Magnafique last night. And it was MAG-NA-FIQUE!  It is a very tasty blend with a higher amount of Merlot this year making it smooth with ripe fruit flavors.  It has good complexity, structure and fruit from the cabernet and the malbec with a grippy finish from the 1% petit verdot.  It may be our best Magnafique yet!  Good thing, because we each have 6 cases of it! :P

 

We bottled about 72 gallons, 30 cases.  We used Ray's new triple-bottler, and it went very fast.  1 hour 15 minutes!  It was the largest single bottling to date and we had to blend into 2 different batches and then combine them as we bottled.

 

The blend ended up being

 

50% Wood River Merlot

40% Wood River Cabernet (Clone 8)

9% Wood River Malbec

1% Wood River Petit Verdot

Chard fermenting fast!

Lee innoculated the chard Fri late, and on Mon eve it was down to 2.5
brix! It was still fermenting strongly and should be done in a day or
two. Troy added 1 more TBSP of nutrient as it is highly reccomended
when using the Cotes des Blancs yeast with Chardonnay.

We are fermenting in the 60G barrel with a breathable bung. A good
way to keep air out and still let CO2 escape.

The wine will be ready to move the wine into stainless kegs on Wed or Thu.

2008 Chard crushed

Lee and Mike picked up a microbin full of chard on Thursday. Est
500-600 pounds. We crushed Thu night. A good 35-40 gallons are in the
60G fermenter, sanatized with just under 4tsp meta.

Chard has more body, great acids and is less sweet this year. More
like the 2006.

24 Brix
3.1 PH

Lee pulled a quart of juice off and is doing the starter. He will add
it tonight or Sat. We are trying a different yeast this year, Cotes
Blanc, to get more fruit flavors. 5 packages plus 2 TBSP nutrient.
We will want to add another 2 TBSP right after fermentation starts.

Troy made a bentonite slurry of 2oz bentonite, 3 cups boiling water
blended and added it Fri morning. GLOP GLOP GLOP!

Quick Grape Report

Lee and I went out to Williamsons on Sat and then stopped by and saw Dennis. Wanted to pass along a couple notes from our discussions.

 

Roger indicated we could have up to 2,000lbs of Cab.  Syrah is unlikely as Koenig wants all he can get. Roger did say we could go in and pick after the mechanical pickers, though. It is worth a try to see what we can get.  Same with the Viognier, we will likely have to "gleen" after the regular picking.  Roger only has a little petite syrah and he doesn't know what they are going to do with it. So they may have some for us.  Roger did comment that the grapes were coming along nicely.

 

Dennis indicated that 1,000 lbs of merlot was easy to do, as is 300-500lbs of Chard.  We could also likely get some cab, but we told him no as we are getting lots of cab from Roger this year.  The malbec is more difficult because the new owners want all the malbec. Dennis may be able to get us a bin of malbec--but doesn't know for sure. And if we get a bin, we likely will get a 1,000lb full bin and not the smaller bins.  On the microbins, I think we'll be able to get 1-3 of the "smaller" microbins from Dennis, with the expectation that we keep them (price yet to be determined...). 

 

So here is how the 2008 order is rounding out. If we don't get any Malbec from Dennis,we have enough coming from Prosser to make Boisique and Maganfique. But we won't be able to do a cab/malbec or syrah/malbec blend.  Since the 500# of Syrah from Roger is unknown and we didn't get the 500# of Clone-6 from Dennis we have extra capacity for more of Roger's cabernet so we should do 1,000 pounds and could do 1,500 pounds. 

 

Wood River

- 300-500lbs Chard

- 1,000lbs Merlot

- 0 - 1,000lbs Malbec

 

Williamson

- 500lbs Viognier (gleen picking)

- 1,000-2,000lbs Clone 2 Cabernet

- 500 lbs Syrah (gleen picking--not sure how much we can expect)

- 100 lbs Petite Syrah (gleen picking? -- not sure if we can, and how much we can expect)

 

RiverRock (WA)

- 400 lbs Clone 6 Cabernet

 

Prosser

- 250 lbs Malbec

- 700 lbs Sangiovese

 

 

 

07 Boisique Bottling

We bottled 20 cases of Boisique last night, with the bottle washing being done the day before. Everyone got 4 cases of pure vino excitement!  Boy the Boisique sure tastes good out of a barrel! :-D

We had a double bottling line setup for awhile, which works great, but the second bottler kept failing to keep a siphon. Ray has ordered a nifty 3-bottle filler that will be more sturdy and really speed up bottling. Check it out at: http://www.eckraus.com/RK760.html . We will wait for our next bottling until it arrives. We'll have to work around the arrival of the Chard grapes (expected 9/25) followed by the Viognier grapes, ETA Oct 1.  We have a big run of Magnafique to do. It will be close to 30 cases!

Photos from my phone-camera are uploaded to the RiverWoods 2008 photo album, linked to our web page.

http://picasaweb.google.com/riverwoodswinery/Wine2008

 

Trial Blending #2

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Trial Blending #2

The group met and tried lots of blends. After much discussion (and some purple tongues) we decided on the following. Number of bottled cases of each wine is an estimate. We need to validate how many gallons we have in carboys.

1. Magnafique

We increased the merlot by 5 percent over the last tasting trials and added 1% petit verdot. We tried it both with "blended" cabs and the just the idaho cab. No clear favorite. The blended cab was a stronger flavor, for sure. We increased the merlot another 10%, and blended it with just the Idaho cab and liked this blend the best. So this year we have a "Left Bank" style Bordeaux blend. Tasty!

 

Est 70G (29+ Cases)

40% Idaho Cab (28G)

50% Wood River Merlot (35G) ** Need to hold back 35G of Merlot from the Boisique blending.

9% Wood River Malbec (6.3G)

1% Petit Verdot (0.7G)

 

2. Cab Blends

We kept the WA clone-6 separate. It's very strong this year--over ripe from hanging a long time (28 brix). Plus it picked up strong flavors from the MH toast French recoop barrel. We Tried blending it with Syrah and Malbec. We all liked the 60/40 Cab Syrah (better than the straight syrah) and the 60/40 Cab Malbec blend, but liked the Cab/Malbec blend the best. So we have a new blend that needs to be named.

 

(12.5 Cases)

60% RiverRock Clone-6 Cabernet (18G)
50% Wood River Malbec (12G)

3. Encore

Last year we made an Encore blend of syrah rose, malbec and a heavy dose of petit verdot. This year we liked the blend better without the petit verdot. It is amazing how well Syrah and Malbec blend together! Our blend this year is:

 

25G (10.4 Cases)

73% RiverRock Syrah (18.25G)

27% Wood River Malbec (6.75G)

 

4. Boisique

We decided on 80/20 at our last tasting.

(21 Cases)

80% Wood River Merlot (40G)

20% Wood River Malbec (10G)

First trial blending results.

The group met to try some different blends for the 2007 wines.

Bosique: Everyone liked the 80/20 merlot/malbec blend the best. The
difference between it and the 75/25 blend was amazing.

We tried 2 different Magnafique blends with no favorite. We will try
dialing up the merlot a bit to 50/40/10 cab/merlot/malbec. We may
also try just blending with the ID cab as the clone6 has a strong
menthol cherry smell (the initial blends were 50/50 cabs).

We will meet again on Monday at 730pm to try more blends, including
some encore blends to use up our extra cab and malbec. Here are some
potential blends.

- 50/50 cab syrah
- 60/40 cab malbec
- 33/33/33 cab syrah malbec
- 50/40/10 syrah malbec p verdot
- 95/4/1 cab malbec p verdot
- 100% syrah

Tasting Trials

Time to do some trial blending! Get your taste buds ready. :)

First trial is Wed at 7:30pm with the second the following Mon or Tue.

We will decide on our Magnafique, and Boisique Blends plus try some
options for our "Encore" blend.

Troy

Fall Schedule

Here are the dates we've gotten grapes the last couple years. We expect everything is a week or two later this year. But it's hard to say.  The cab will likely need to hang as long as possible to ripen--until frost is eminent.

 

Lee has mentioned several times that he would like to get some Chard in addition to the Viognier. I don't see any reason not to do it. It doesn't take a barrel and we have the capacity in Stainless. Anyone object?  The bonus of doing 30G of the Chard is it will come in a 500# microbin, which we can use for fermenting and possibly on our 2 runs to Washington for grapes this Fall.  Please reply-all with your thoughts. If we're going to do it we need to contact Dennis with the request ASAP.

 

Everyone should be getting bottles ready. 15 cases each, including 1.5 cases of non-shouldered for the syrah.  If you can, pre-rinse them with some straight-a to get out the stains to help make the bottle washing go faster.  I expect we'll want to do some wash-days before our bottle days.  We've got a lot of wine to bottle this Fall, and it will take 2 or 3 bottlings.  What are people's schedules between Sept 21 - October 5th so we can start to coordinate bottling?

 

We need to do some blending trials as well for this year's Boisique and Magafique. Plus we need to decide how we want to handle the syrah and the extra cabernet and malbec.  Here are a couple options to think about--we need to taste them and vote on what we like. (These are only a few options to start the discussion).

 

1. Keep Varietals Separate

Bottle 100% syrah. Bottle 95% cab + 5% malbec. Bottle 100% Malbec.

 

2. Separate Syrah and a Cab/Malbec Blend

Bottle 100% syrah. Bottle cab and malbec together at a 60%cab 40% malbec ratio.  Like the Amencya blend we tasted a few weeks ago.

 

3. Encore blend of Cab/Malbec/Syrah

Combine the syrah cab and malbec together. It would be similar to our "Encore" blend last fall. We found that Syrah and Malbec blended well, and I've seen several wines on the market that do this blend.  We need to taste it and see what we like!

 

Troy

 

PS: Ray--have you decided on your new barrel? You might consider holding off ordering it until we have confirmation that we'll get all the grapes we want. We have stainless and carboy storage where we can hold the wine for a few weeks if needed.

 

 

Chard

- Sept 16 2006

- Sept 20 2007

 

Viognier

- ~ Oct 1 2006 (we picked a little later than everyone else. grapes were ready a week before)

 

Merlot

- ~Oct 1 2006

- Oct 5 2007

- Oct 14 2007 (Wood River

 

Malbec

- Oct 14 2006

- Oct 5 2007

 

Syrah

- Oct 6 2006 (hells canyon)

- Oct 27 2007 (River rock)

 

Cab

- Oct 14 2006 (Wood River Clone 6)

- Oct 19 2006 (Williamson)

- Oct 23 2006 (River Rock clone 8)

- Oct 14 2007 (Wood River Clone 8)

- Oct 15 2007 (Riverrock Clone 6)

 

 

 

8/19 Topping Report

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Troy and Mike did a quick top-up on Tuesday and added the final dose of meta to prepare for bottling and protect it from oxidation. We added 15ppm SO2 (about 8ppm will get bound to the wine) which is about how much SO2 will get dissipated as we rack the wine out and bottle it.  We didn't add extra Meta to the Malbec as it had earlier additions of meta from the rotten egg smell treatments.  We also broke out a gallon of Merlot into a Platypus for topping, and we sprayed Bob's 15G barrel where it is weeping.

 

We counted up about 185 gallons of wine, which equates to about 15 1/2 cases of wine each. Start washing bottles! :)  Last year when we were bottling Lee suggested using non-shouldered bottles for the Syrah. That would be nice to have this year. So 1 1/2 cases of non-shouldered and 14 cases of shouldered.

 

In looking at the gallons of wine we will have some extra cabernet and malbec.  While topping Mike and I tried a 50/50 blend of malbec w/ the Idaho cab and with the Clone 6 cab. Then we poured the leftovers together to be a blend of the 2 cabs and the malbec. Interestingly we again liked the blended ID Cab and WA clone-6 cab mixed with the malbec the best (just like with the recent Reserve cab blend).  More tasting trials are needed to get others thoughts and try other blends. :)

 

 

 

8/7/08 Topping Report

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The gang met tonight to top-up and talk about the 2008 grape order.  We also got to taste Michele and Tom's Chard and Cab they recently bottled and a bottle of Zerba cab from WA that Ray and Sharon brought.  The chard was nice with a nice oak balance and a buttery texture from the MLF.  Still some tartness--but it wasn't over powering.  A good result with the oak dominoes. The cab had some malbec and merlot. It was the first wine in their new 15G Hungarian barrel and had a strong wood campfire nose to it. The taste was smooth. After a few months of bottle age it should drink nicely. :)  The Zerba cab was nice--but the group liked our cabs better!

 

We spot tasted the wines as we topped. All were sound. Bob's 15G barrel continues to have a slight weep on the bottom front. The wine is sound (merlot 1/2) so we sprayed it down again w/ meta and we will need to seal it after we bottle this fall.  We smelled the empty barrels and burned a sulfur wick in the two 20G french and 8g American as they were getting a slight VA smell. The flame got a bit tall and we blackend the wood a bit. Troy's not as good at it as Lee. (cough cough). We need to start hydrating the little 8G barrel with some water and meta.  We also need to add 15ppm meta to the reds (except the malbec and merlot 1/2 which already got extra meta).

 

We discussed the 2008 grape order and the change in Wood River Vineyard access. We believe we can get grapes from Dennis this year, but we are uncertain about access after that. Most likely the malbec access will be gone, but we may be able to still get merlot.  We need to make contact with the new owner.

We agreed our #1 priority this year was getting some extra Malbec in case we need to hold some over for next year.  Other priorities are to get merlot for Boisique and to try out some grapes from the Prosser source that has Malbec to see how it is and see if we can get some syrah from Roger or Hell's Canyon. Since it's a late start year it will be difficult to get ripe cab, but we would still like to see what clone-6 we can get from Dennis and what clone-2 we can get from Roger, plus we have some clone 6 cab from Walla Walla.  For a white this year we'd like to do some more Viognier.  We'd like to try a super-tuscan again and get some Sangiovese from Prosser. We can blend it with cab or merlot. Since the cab may be green this year we may be better off with Merlot--which is reflected in our order. But we may change last minute to get some Cabernet to blend instead.

 

We would like to contact Hell's Canyon about getting some more of their syrah. Sharon thought she could get us in contact with them through Bob. Mike and Troy will take a bottle of our 06 Syrah over and talk with them and see if we can get some grapes.

 

Here's the grape order we are looking at, followed by the proposed barrel allocations.  Grapes will shift around as we find out what we can get from where.  If we end up getting Syrah from both Roger and Hells' Canyon then we'll have to store some wine in the 15G stainless kegs with oak dominoes.  We're getting a couple different grapes from Prosser to try out. The price is reasonable, but there will be extra cost from the drive over and back for gas.

 

Wood River

- 800lbs Malbec

- 1,000lbs Merlot (sunny side clone)

- 500lbs Clone 6 Cabernet (est. could be more)

 

Williamson

- 500 lbs Viognier

- 500 lbs Clone 2 Cabernet

- 400 lbs Syrah

- 100 lbs Petite Syrah (to blend with the syrah--may need to pick ourselves)

 

RiverRock (WA)

- 400 lbs Clone 6 Cabernet

 

Hells Canyon

- 500 lbs Syrah (hope for--not a sure thing)

 

Prosser

- 250 lbs Malbec

- 700 lbs Sangiovese

 

Barrels:

 

Mike's 30G Hungarian #1: Wood River Merlot

Mike's 30G Hungarian #2: Syrah (+ 25% Petit Syrah if we can get some)

Lee's 30G French: Wood River Clone 6 Cab

Troy's 26G American: Williamson Clone 2 Cab

Ray's 22G French: Wood River Malbec

Bob's 20G French: Wood River Malbec

Ray's 20G French (new): WA Clone 6 Cab

Bob's 15G American: Wood River Merlot

Troy's 15G Hungarian: Prosser Sangiovese

Lee's 15G French: Prosser Malbec

Lee's 8G American: Prosser Sangiovese

Tom&Michel 15G Hungarian: Prosser Sangiovese

Tom&Michele 10G French: Wood River Merlot