2018 Sauv. Blanc & Syrah, day 8

08:00
Outside: 55 F and clear.
Cellar: 72 F.  (Suddenly I realized.  Kit was the most trigger-happy man I'd ever met.  Suddenly I realized, the room thermometer is only two feet from the white fermenter, and probably has been influenced by it since day 2 of the winemaking...)

Syrah: 74 F, 0.3 Brix.  Given the reality of everyone's work schedules, today should be the day for pressing, I think.  Would otherwise be fun to let it go on into the minus Brix and get more skin contact in a more relaxed year.  Will shout out to the winemakers to see who can pitch in.  Decisions need to be made whether to press in the cellar or up top, and whether to use the bladder or basket press.

Sauvignon Blanc: 76 F, 3.5 Brix.  Still sizzling.  Foam is flat with cracks in it - looks like a yellow lava field.  Could go off the gross lees today, or could wait a little.  Much less work than the red press and can be done solo, so less time pressure to get it done on the weekend.  History?

• 2016, day 8 @ -0.5 Brix
• 2015, day 7 @ 4.7 Brix (what was the hurry?)
• 2014, day 9 @ 0.6 Brix
• 2013, day 6 @ 4.5 Brix (what was the hurry?)

Yes, will wait till we're closer to zero or below.

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Pressed!!

12.5 gallons of purple, the majority of it free run, but the press fraction mixed in.  The seedy last 2.5 gallons are so far separate but for a bit used to top off the first to carboys.

Danny, Steve C., Michael H. and Lori did the work.  Passing the juice and grapes a gallon at a time up the hatch to the press worked out perfectly with pretty minimal mess.

18:00
Three of the 5 vessels the Syrah is in overflowed their airlocks.  Most sloppily was the last and smallest vessel, which would have come from the last and seed-filled pressing of the bottom of the fermenter.  Maybe not too surprising.  All cleaned up, but it worries me that it could create a fruitfly situation if it repeats and goes unnoticed.

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22:00
Outside:64 F, clear.
Cellar: 73 F.

Sauv. Blanc: 74 F, 2.1 Brix.  All of the shag has disappeared.  There are islands of bubbles and sizzling - lots of movement.  Tomorrow looks like the right day to move into carboys.

Syrah: Developing a little priest's collar, but the bubblers have stayed clean.  Occasional gas passing through the bubbler.

I think it's likely that tomorrow I'll start writing about the two wines separately.

And I've ordered a bunch of supplies, a little too late, from more wine: toppers, bubblers, a 3 gallon plastic carboy to experiment with, and a replacement for the nylon liner that works inside the bladder press.

2018 Sauv. Blanc & Syrah, day 7

09:00
Outside: 59 F, clear.
Cellar: 73 F.

Sauv. Blanc: 77 F, short reading +5 Brix, long reading 3 Brix.  Thin shag but still sizzly.  No foam at all at the top of the tube but lots of solids in the bottom third.  Looks likely that the gross lees this year will be way more gross than usual.  Different grape than we've used before, bt seems much more likely to me that it's the results of foot crushing.

Syrah: 74 F and 1.7 Brix on the short scale.   Punched slowly to try and get a better sense of the depth of the cap.  Dunno, but deeper than I guessed a few days ago.  Mike Savno's been in touch offering to help press on Sunday.   Timing is good.

Still no chat about malo - still I'm in favor of letting the wine and cellar decide on their own for the Syrah.  But for the Sauvignon Blanc?  I haven't done any reading on what folks on the more natural side usually do with the varietal.  We can't cold stabilize it, can we?  Put the juice into a floating lid tank and put that tank in a 55 gallon fermenter and fill the space in between with ice water?  Stay home from work for a week re-icing the water?

Re the Brix readings.  It's that time of the ferment when I'm reminded that the short and long scale hydrometers disagree with each other.  I trust the short scale measurements.  But I don't think they indicate the long scale is wrong at the high end, where the long scale and the refractometer pretty much agree.  And we don't have any device to correlate the lowest readings at.  Clinitest tablets?  I've never heard much happiness about them.  Leave it a lone for another year.  Yep.

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2018 Sauv. Blanc & Syrah, day 6

06:00:
Outside: 62 F, pouring rain.
Cellar: 75 F.

Sauv. Blanc: 78 F and somewhere between 7 and 10 Brix.  Why such a big range?  I wrote a few days ago about how many rising and falling solids and bubbles there are in the sample tube.  I took pics and video this morning to record them.  They physically pushed the initial reading of 7 Brix all the way up to 10 Brix in a matter of minutes.  I'm guessing that 7 is truer, but there's probably now too much alcohol in the juice to get a good refractometer reading as a cross-check.  I guess I could strain the juice and re-measure.  Mmm, next time?

Same sample, a few minutes elapsed.

Syrah: 78 F, nice punch.  Did not take a Brix measure.  Will likely be pressing on Sunday.  I'm beginning to think that we'll be able to use the bladder press in the hatch area of the cellar rather than hailing out the basket press - we'll mostly have free-run juice.

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16:30
Outside: 64 F.
Cellar: 75 F.

Sauv. Blanc: 78 F, 5 Brix.  Not a great deal of visual change.  Solids in the tube continue to be a wonder.  They seem to form a strata just below the bottom of the hydrometer.  Holding it up?  Unknown.

Syrah: 76 F and 3 Brix on the short scale hydrometer.  We have wine, ladies and gentlemen.  Pressing this weekend for sure.

2018 Sauv. Blanc & Syrah, day 5

06:00
Outside 62 F, not raining (that's the best that can be said), breezy and less humid than the last couple of days.
Cellar: 75 F.

Sauv. Blanc: 80 F, 14.5 Brix, thick but regular foam (1.5 inches), sizzling but no great bubbling.  Airlock still.  How many solid particles there are in the must is pretty notable.  With about 40% of the sugar seeming to be converted at this point, it looks likely that there aren't going to be any fermentation fireworks - no dancing bubblers or overflowing foam.  Just steady working yeast.  Need to go back and look again at what I thought was the rise between the evening of day 3 and the morning of day 4.  Safest to say that the evening day 3 reading was bad.

Syrah: 80 F, 9 Brix.  Woot!  Punch is ever softer.  It only takes minutes for the cap to reestablish itself (thinly).  Color is really extraordinary.  Compared to the SB must the Syrah must is particle free and still.

Sidenote: Jim & Erin took a little tour of the cellar last night at around 10:30.  Erin punched down the red.

(Video is of SJL's punch down in the AM, not Erin's 11 PM punchdown)

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18:00
Cellar 75 F, outside 68 F and 78% humidity.

Sauv. Blanc: 79.5 F, 10.5 Brix.  Stately shag.  No great delta in behavior but a +35% drop in sugar since this morning.

Syrah: 80 F*, 5 Brix.  Lovely.  Cap is, what, 4 or 5 inches?  Might switch to the short scale hydrometer in the morning, or maybe wait until the long scale is closer to zero.  Either way: it's time to decide whether to encourage malo, discourage it, or just let the wine do what it wants to do.

Here's the *.  I've been testing the temperature of the juice with a standard beer / wine thermometer, about a foot long, with a scale from freezing to boiling.  Inserted into either the white juice or through the cap of the red, it's down in the heart of the thing and getting a good internal temperature reading.  This evening I also used a digital thermometer, only inserting it a few inches.  In the white, I got the same temperature reading with both thermometers.  With the red, where the digital was either at the bottom of the cap or maybe just through it into the juice, the reading was 84 F rather than 80.  Hot stuff rises.  Air gets trapped in baby's tummy. Wah!

2018 Sauv. Blanc & Syrah, day 4

06:00
Outside: 72 F and 96% humidity.  Gack.
Cellar: 75 F.

Sauv. Blanc: Confusion!  76 F, less active than I was expecting, and Brix readings varied from 19 to 21, using both hydrometer and refractometer.  What's happening.  Shag was thin but noisy.  In the tube there were more falling solids than rising bubbles  - but plenty of each.  I was expecting to see the bubbler chugging and another precipitous drop in sugar.  Need to check back through past years.  I don't think I'm imagining that I've seen a rise before in measured sugar a couple of days in to the process.  Did not put in a fresh SanJ.

Syrah: 78 F and kicking butt.  Did not take a Brix reading.  Punch down is looser again.  The aroma that rises when you take off the lid of the fermenter is really something.

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OK, No.  I've checked back through the years and have not seen a rise in measured sugar at any point.  BUT I've seen an unexpected plateau a number of years at just about this point in the fermentation.  Look for it to drop again this evening.  Or just stop worrying.

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2018 Sauv. Blanc & Syrah, day 3

05:30
Room 73 F.  Outside 61 F and raining.

Drier grapes being
pushed up into the cap.

Syrah: 72 F, up 2 degrees in last 12 hours.  Too many solids in sample to take a brix reading by hydrometer.  There is now an obviously drying cap forming, and getting your face below the lip of the fermenter gets you a quick CO2 rush.  Punching down feels good.  Things are happening.

Sauvignon Blanc:  74 F, also up 2 degrees since last night.  Brix 24.  No action on the airlock yet but fermentation is good.  Do we chance adding SanJ coolers now?  Will wait until this evening (at which point it might have gotten hot in there and I'll regret not having put them in this morning: like every year!)

I purchased a small submersible water / glycol pump that should arrive tomorrow.  Will try setting it up so that I circulate iced water through the must.  Might be too goofy a rig, but will be worth a try.  It will mean leaving the airlock off the fermenter, but that should be fine given that it will only be used during the heavy fermentation - yes?  No?

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18:00
Room 74 F, outside 72 F, rainy & 93% humidity.  Blows!

Syrah: 76 F, 21 Brix.  It was a very purple affair getting enough liquid into the tube for a hydrometer reading.  (Look at that color!) Cap has risen a couple of inches.  Punching down there was more give than this morning.  Will try to watch the temperature carefully - this is about as hot as we want it to get, but it's not as active as the fermentation is going to get.

Sauv. Blanc: 76 F, Brix I'm going to call 21.  See the two photos.  There's so much foam in the must that's been drawn off that it's tough to get a decent reading.  I added one SanJ gizmo, and will check in about 4 hours to see how close to exhausted it is. As with the red, I don't want this to get hotter.

So both wines have blown off roughly a fifth of their sugar in the 48 hours since pithing, and really mostly in the last 12 hours.  Hike!

On left, the foam as the must was drawn.  On right,
trying to slice off the cap like a bartender on a beer.

21:00

The temp of the Sauv. Blanc is down 2 degrees, and the ice in the SanJ is completely melted.  So, nice quick cool-down, but not far and not for long.

2018 Sauv. Blanc & Syrah, day 2

07:00
Room: 74 F, outside 58 F.

Sauv. Blanc: 70 F, thinnest of shags covering the surface but no real action yet or visible or audible bubbling.

Syrah: 68 F, only the slightest lacing of the yeast where it was poured onto the grapes 12 hours ago.  Punched everything lightly to integrate the yeast more and also to feel the consistency of the grapes and understand how much juice had been released. (Pic is prior to punching.)

Did not measure sugar in either.  I'm assuming that the temperature rise do far is just everything moving toward ambient temperature rather than anything chemical happening.

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21:00
Room 74 F, outside 63 F.

Both wines are softly sizzling.  No delta to sugar levels, but the yeast has taken hold and the fermentation has started.

Sauv. Blanc: 72 F, Brix unchanged by hydrometer @ +25.  Temp has raised by 2 degrees and it's gone to medium shag.  There's a definite fine sizzle when you get your ear in there.

Syrah: 70 F and Brix unmeasured.  Looking at the surface you would not know that anything was happening.  Get your ear in there and you know otherwise.  Punch and you start to get suds.  Go to the videotape!

2018 Sauv. Blanc & Syrah, day 1

Writing about the winemaking this year has forked off from this blog to an email list going out to the winemakers.  Let's catch up.

After some back and forth chats with folks at Musto about would and would not be available this weekend, and with Sister Karen about just how many lugs she could cram into her KIA Soul, we settled on Sauvignon Blanc from the Lanza vineyard in Suisun Valley (9x36#), just arriving that day, and Syrah (6x36#) from Washington state.

On Saturday, Sep. 22, Karen picked up the grapes & brought them down to Brooklyn.  Danny Levy helped us stack & wrap them, and we'll be working with them today.  They are effin beautiful.  (Forgot to remove a cluster for the focaccia before wrapping them!)

The berries of both grapes are small.  We'll either run them through the destemmer multiple times - we don't have a crusher - or stomp the whites, or both.

I let Musto lead me on the yeast selection.  We'll be using QA 23 for the Sauvignon Blanc,, which the man says "Enhances the aroma of terpenic varietals like Muscat, Sauvignon blanc and Gewurztraminer".  And D254 for the Syrah, which the man says is a Rhone isolate.  My only worry is that D254 is said to run hot.  So does our cellar unless it turns damned cold outside.  Maybe we'll want to use icepacks in the red this year as well as the white?  Who knows!?

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5:30 AM it's raining lightly.  Fake weather!

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19:00 OK, that was a seriously awesome day.

Phil helped with the setup starting at 8 and the crowd started arriving at 10.  One one point Doyle said we had 19 people.

Syrah first.  Straight destemming out front, handing down buckets of grapes and putting them directly into a 55 gallon fermenter.  About one third full.

Sauvignon Blanc next.  We destemmed and put the grapes into another 55 gallon drum, this one up top, and one by one people took turns barefoot stomping the grapes.  Karen, Erin, Laura, Erin's Mom (Anne?  someone correct me), Kaydi, Nicki, Michael and Nathan all had turns.  We'd put in a foot or two off destemmed grapes, stomp them, and press them while a new round of destemmed grapes were having a go.  We were doing it all to increase the yield.  And it worked.  We got 75 liters of juice from 324# of grapes.  For comparison, we got 60 liters in 2015 from 420# of Muscat Alexandria.  In 2014 we got 66 liters from 504# of Muscat A.  Granted, it's a different grape, but Muscat A. is giant and juicy compared to tiny Sauv. B.  Anyway, it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Cleaned from 2 to 3 or so, and a grand winemaker's lunch out back.

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18:30  Room 74F.

1st S.B. hydrometer reading

Syrah: 64F, +26 Brix measured with a hydrometer.  Prepped 18 grams of D254 and pitched it.

Sauvignon Blanc: 64F, +25 Brix measured with a hydrometer.  Prepped 24 grams of QA23 and pitched it.

Both juices were more or less at the ambient outdoor temperature.

I'm going to hold off on posting many pics from the day and shoot for putting up a gallery of pics from everyone.  But here are some of the evening tech pics.

1st Syrah hydrometer reading

Prepping yeast

Getting stoked for 2018!

Have created an email list for this year's winemakers.  And was just now rummaging through the cellar.  Can't wait to start cleaning the gear - the poly tank we usually do the primary white fermentation in, the 100 liter steel tank we might doa small batch or red in, the 50 gallon drums we use for big red fermentations, the bladder and basket presses... Momma!

Lodi Muscat is hitting Brooklyn Terminal Market (Lapide's) this Thursday - about the same as at Musto up in CT.  Musto has confirmed that they are not setting u any trucks to deliver to Brooklyn, so we either work it our ourselves (and that would let us buy from elsewhere in CA or from WA), or it's Lodi all the way.