Diversion: shrubs, etc.

Saturday the 19th we bottled another carboy of Muscat - one to go, and I imagine that one will go straight into PG-S' summer-fun trove.

This evening I strained and sweetened two shrubs - one is sour cherry, the other is rhubarb.  I froze the fruit for both last summer.  This seemed like a good way to clear the freezer before fresh fruit starts coming in.  The fruit macerated in champagne vinegar for a week.  Should be ready to try in a week or two, but I corked the bottles and will try to hang on to them until the weather is really warm.

While I was storing the bottled shrubs I came across two 750 ml bottles of sage liqueur and a single 750 of the Yvette von Boven citrus based vermouth I made last year.  Buried treasure!

2012 reds, tasted and thinking about blending

We tasted the 2012 Yakima Merlot and the CA Cab Franc.  Hopefully Lori will add her notes.  Unbelievable color in the Merlot - it was three weeks in primary fermentation.  Neither has a striking nose but both taste more complex than you'd think - maybe especially the CF.

We did a quicky blend- 89% Merlot, 20% Cab F, and that was nicer than either wine alone.  We're thinking May might be a good time to have a few people come and do some real testing with us and then bottle all 17 gallons of it.  (I feel like I might have hidden more of the Merlot somewhere... but where?)

Very happy with how the Merlot has kept in the Fusti and how the CF has kept with the silicon bung in the carboy.  Wondering (as usual) if I should have been more aggressive with Meta for both: now would be a good time to catch up on that.

2013 Muscat, day 206: first bottling!

Good morning, winemakers!

We bottled the first couple of cases of 2013 Muscat today.  Levels were good and we added no meta.  Zippy compared to the last couple of years, but then we did add a tad of tartaric acid early on.  I feel a little guilty about it, but then we didn't grow the grapes and they traveled who knows how long from the west coast and were stored for who knows how long at terminal market before they got to us.

More potassium bitartrate crystals in the CB - not nearly so much as at the last racking - and virtually no lees.

We intended to bottle 2 more cases but found that a lot of the stored empty's had crud, bugs or black mold in them - very disappointing.  New house rule: no empy's get stored without a power washing and meta dip.  I've scrounged around and come up with another couple of cases worth - might still get another carboy done today or tomorrow, and that'll leave us with one more.

Corked bottle

While bottling we had a mis-hap that we hadn't seen before - Lori put a second cork into an already corked bottle.  I heard her saying, Boy, this one is tougher than all the others...