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!?
5:30 AM it's raining lightly. Fake weather!
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.
18:30 Room 74F.
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| 1st S.B. hydrometer reading |
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.
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| 1st Syrah hydrometer reading |
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| Prepping yeast |
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