Phil and Erin were the early birds, with David right on their tail. We finished setting up and cleaning all of the equipment by 10 AM or so. (Getting the destemmer out of the cellar was the usual problem, and a very good natured passer-bye pitched in.)
Karen arrived with the 12 36# lugs of Muscat C. not much after 11. Unloading was quick and everyone dug into the grapes. They were in very good shape, a little more raisining than we saw in last year's Sav. Blanc, and very little rot. Testing for Brix was all over the place depending on the cluster and the lug. everything from 24 to 26.
Way too many grapes to do everything in a single stomp, and that probably led to an hour of extra time in the winemaking. We had to stop destemming and wait for the stomped grapes to get fed through the bladder press (maybe 3 to 4 batches into the press). Doodle doo. Note to self: we can fix that next year by using two stomping barrels, filling the second one with destemmed grapes while the first is being stomped.
Nathan was first into the barrel, then Karen. Then a complete stranger who got sucked into the whirlwind. (Did anybody get her name?)
Putting the stomped grapes through the press got us a great amount of juice before even inflating the bladder. Mihai was, again, the press master.
After clearing the barrel we did it all again, and this time the only stomper was - again - a young woman who passed bye and was very into it - she even went home to change into stomping togs and returned. (Name? She said we should take the winemaking on the road to Soho and charge folks $180 for the pleasure of the stomping.) Michael G took over for me getting the juice into the fermenter.
100 liters on the nose!
Cleanup went until some time between 2 and 3, I think. And then the heroes' lunch.
Pitched 30 grams of QA23 at 8 PM. Getting a brix reading just before pitching was also pretty unreliable.
Here are the worries:
- Temp during winemaking and this entire coming week are about 20 F higher than last year. So I'm worried the cellar temps might be high and the ferment too fast.
- There's 100 liters in the 100 liter tank. Will we have an insanely overflowing mount of foam? Should I siphon out 10 liters to make headroom and let that other 10 ferment in a carboy? I've pitched all the yeast - will the siphon juice have enough yeast distributed in it not to get stuck?
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