Tasting before breakfast it was all black cherry, but still tart, too. As the hour wore on, and particularly toward the end when I was siphoning directly from smaller vessels through a hose instead of using the fancier gizmos, and was getting mouthfuls of wine, the tartness went away. Writing about it now, I hear The Young Rascals playing People Got To Be Free.
Where was I?
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| Looking into a small topping jug, the lees run off with the inky wine, and the jammy chunks show themselves. |
The SB was destemmed, then stomped, then pressed, then fermented in a single tank until around zero Brix, then separated into carboys where it started out opaque custard yellow and threw off lots of lees - fine and not so fine - and, in the 2nd racking, fine lees and salts.
The Syrah was destemmed, fermented whole berries, and at about zero brix much of it went free-run into carboys, and the rest pressed into carboys. This left the Syrah with very little in the way of fine lees in this morning's racking, with jammy little chunks of lee/grape schmutz.
So. We went from 5+5+1+1/2 to 5+5+1/2, and also filled two small capped bottles and a pint jar for the winemakers to taste.
I also (don't tell Lieke Maas) added 4 ml of 10% solution to the 5 gallon carboys.
