It begins to begin.
7:00
Forecast has changed so that it looks like there will be no rain - and no tent to put up. 58 F at 7 AM, going to a high of 64. The grapes have been in the Mini overnight with lots of ice blocks - sort of a cooler on wheels. Jake and Liz brought them down yesterday, arriving at 3 PM. They look very, very good. Sorting should be quick. No measurements taken yet. Plenty to do.
Dare I say it? Yes. Awesome day 1!
The crew started gathering at 10, were eating the first focaccia by 10:30, and were hauling gear shortly afterwards. We decided on one sorting table, put the destemmer in the usual place, and put the bladder press out by the curb. Wheeled the car down to the house and only took crates out of it when they were needed for sorting. Sorting went fast because the grapes were so good. Backup was in destemming, because that could not go faster than the pressing.
90 liters of juice! wildly more than yields from Muscat in prior years. Was it the nature of Chardonnay? Or just the relative quality of the grapes?
Took five early refractometer readings from a single cluster (the one we used for focaccia) and they ranged from 23.8 to 27.8 Whacky.
At 3 PM from juice: 25 brix, 3.86 pH, 63 degrees F, uncertain acid readings, but the seemed low. Repeated around 7 PM and we opted to add about 130 g. of tartaric.
At 7:45 we hydrated 20 grams of EC-1118 and pitched it.
But about the day: Ron Rosansky, Jim Paul, Michael Gramaglia and Christina Dolce Vite were the new kids in the barrel and they worked like banshees. Pietro and Mihai did the side-job of hauling new cabinets into the cellar. Carmelo made the transition from little kid onlooker to active participant. Because the grapes were great sorting went fast. Plastic crates meant wildly quicker breakdown. Clean-up and hauling back to the cellar never went faster than ever. We were at lunch by two and up from it at about 4:30. Fab!
No comments:
Post a Comment