2018 Sauv. Blanc & Syrah, day 10

06:00

Clean night, with just a little fouling in the bubbler of SB-5.  Wackadoodle action in SB-4, the three gallon CB.  Labeled everything.  That is all.

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And a shout out to Bitter & Esters on Washington Ave., where I picked up a 3 gallon carboy yesterday.  Let me move the Sauv. Blanc without having to bottle anything old.

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22:00
All groovy.  Here's a pic of the dead yeast and falling grape solids in

Sauvignon Blanc carboys 2 &3 (three to the right), +24 hours after coming out of the primary fermenter.  Maybe an inch or so up the curve of the glass.

2018 Sauvignon Blanc moved out of primary, day 9

18:00
Outside 75 F, humid.
Cellar 74 F.

Sauv. Blanc: 74 F, bouncing between 1.1 and 1.3 Brix.

Time to move the wine out of the primary fermenter.  I had estimated 75 liters, so roughly 19 or 20 gallons, and knew that there were an awful lot of dead yeast and grape solids in there, so... 18 gallons?  Yes! Exactly!  5+5+5+3+1.  Maybe a gallon of swill left behind.

The 5's look great, the three started getting yeasty, and the one is a total beast of solids - don't really know what will become of it.  It almost immediately fouled itself but seems to be behaving now.  I have the 5 and the 1 in a bus tray so if they get sloppy clean-up should be fine.

Family portrait.  19 Gallons of Sauv. Blanc, 12.5 of Syrah,
and some distant cousins in the background

2018 Sauv. Blanc & Syrah, day 9

07:00
Outside: 63 F, overcast.
Cellar: 73 F.

Sauv. Blanc: 74 F, 1.6 to 2 Brix.
Similar activity to last evening, but less.  Brix reading in the tube traveled pretty quickly from 1.6 to 2.0, but then stabilized at 2.  Should move it to carboys this evening to make sure the surface can be covered by CO2 from the end of fermentation - the surface in the primary is quite large.  The only worry now is that I didn't do any great planning regarding the carboys themselves - I have plenty of fives, but all my threes and ones are full.  Might need to bottle something to get what I need - or play half a day of hooky and buy more at Terminal Market.  Another choice is to put everything into the 100 liter steel floating lid tank until I get the carboys sorted.  I don't love the gasket on the lid, but will test it this evening.

Syrah: Stoppers and bubblers stayed clean overnight.  Occasional action in each vessel.

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.

And... turning our attention to 2018

Sent out email to the 2016 crew to chat: red, white, grapes and whether anyone will be available for cooling, punching down, taking measurements and general fiddling if we find ourselves on the road again this year at harvest time.

It begins.  Following the blog @ Musto.  Thinking about gear.  Trying to come up with a reason why I could possibly need another 14 gallon fusti.

I should have said: we drank the 2016 Chardonnay

Lots of it.  At the June 9 puttanesca party.  We still have a questionable 6 gallons or so, not bottled.  Need to taste that.  But what we had at the party was happy wine.

2016 Chardonnay, day 339

Holy moly, long time no post.

With the summer new wine party not happening this June we've let the wine cruise in it's carboys.  But we're getting ready to taste & bottle and potentially make way for a batch of 2017 reds.  2 days ago we picked up corks and more clear bottles from Pagano at Brooklyn Terminal Market and put a couple of carboys up on the racking shelf.  Gird yourself.

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Afternoon & 10 gallons bottled.  Zero sediment in the carboys.  Good tasting chardonnay.  No metabisulfites added - the wine was at about 15 ppm and I let it ride.  Some bottles got more aerated than I would have liked, but so it goes.

I did not taste the CB that was questionable back in the spring: will do so.  There's also a 3 gallon CB, which might be begging to become vermouth...

2016 Chardonnay, day 177: last racking

Maybe a month later than I hoped, but otherwise pretty much average for us, we've just done our last racking before bottling.

Looking into a 5 gal CB, the lees were
thin had had a little crystalline character.

Three of the carboys were very similar - good color, a little tart but only a little.  Clean.  Lemon and banana?  Yes.  Each of these three tested at about 15 ppm free SO2 by Titrette.  We had not added any sulphur up to this point and I opted for a very modest boost, aiming at under 10 ppm more using 3 ml of 10% solution for every 5 gallons.  (Yes, I realize, I will be booted out of the natural wine society.)

And then there was the outlier carboy - the one that came up weirdly cloudy when we racked on day 44 back in November.  Today it had much less nose than the others, and was downright prickly to the tongue - not frizzante, but unpleasantly prickly.  I racked it but will not blend it into any of the other wine, and might choose not to bottle it - drag.  It also tested just slightly lower for SO2 - 14 ppm.

So we've gone from 5+5+5+5 to 5+5+questionable 5+3+1, using one of the good carboys to top the others.

2016 Chardonnay, day 101: a silly malolactic longer

See that tiny horizontal chain of bubbles at the top of the wine in the neck?  That's all that's left from the thin priest's collar of CO2 from the MLF that was going on.  The very slightest activity in all four vessels.

When this round of fermentation is definitely over we'll rack for the last time (I hope) before bottling.

2016 Chardonnay, day 71: more MLF

All four 5 gallon carboys now fermenting again.

2016 Chardonnay, day 70: Malo?!

It's turned sharply colder here in new Amsterdam, the heat's been on in the house every morning and on and off through the day, the cellar (with furnace) is hanging around 69/70 F.  Mornings are 5 degrees cooler upstairs.

Not much has been happening with the wine, but this evening I decided to get down on my knees to see if any potassium bitartrate crystals were forming as they have in the last few years.  (See particularly the picture in the December 1 post from 2013.)  Nope, no crystals, but... two of the 4 five gallon carboys have become active again!  I'm hoping it's malolactic fermentation kicking in on its own and not a dead mouse or something worse.  Not popping the bubblers, but steady streams of gas.

Will keep a careful watch to see if the others join them.  If they don't, we'll try to keep them separate at the next racking.

2016 Chardonnay, day 44, racked

Different levels of clarity.

Jon, Jim and Ron came over to help rack.  We went from 21 gallons to 20.  The first three carboys were all very much alike, but the fourth had much looser lees, clouded when we brought it over to the workbench, and you can see from the photo that the new cb that it went into is much less clear than its fellows.

Taste: still grapey, very tart, but very good for only a month and a half into the process.  Am hoping that some of the acid falls out over the winter, as it has with prior years' wines.  Did not measure.

About 16 ppm free SO2 - will measure again in a few days.  We were pretty good about not agitating the wine much during racking.  Will have to make a decision about whether to leave it alone or not.

Looking back at racking histories

Year	Date pressed	Days in primary	Days to next racking	Days to next racking	Days to next racking
2016	10/1/2016	8
2015	9/19/2015	7	11	64
2014	10/5/2014	6	7	75	115
2013	9/22/2013	6	8	56
2012	9/29/2012	7	8	82	78

Holy mackerel.  

Turns out that I've had a language shift that's created a racking shift.  2012 through 2015 when we took the must out of the primary and into carboys it was active enough so that we left air-gaps and a couple days later, as things calmed, we topped them off.  In those years, 7 to 11 days after topping off, we racked the wine and I called that racking it off its gross lees.

2016, with a different varietal, when we went from primary to carboys we topped immediately, and I also dumped the bottom couple inches of must calling them (in my mind) the gross lees.  Whatever!  But it means that if we rack this weekend we'll be at 40 days where we'd previously been at a max of 11.  I'm fine with it - things are looking beautiful.

2016 Chardonnay, day 42: moreso

07:00

Same vessel as in the last post, 17 days later.  Transparent now, still.  Not completely clear but ready to rack this weekend.  The larger carboys are all in similar states.

The 2015 wine we did not rack in November, but waited until Dec. 12.  2014 we waited until Jan. 3.  2013, Dec. 1.  2012, Jan. 5 but we did not start winemaking that year until Oct. 13.  Going to have to make a chart of all this.  Maybe we'll convince ourselves to wait a couple more weeks?

2016 Chardonnay, day 25: settling

21:00

All of the CBs are settling at about the same rate as this jug - an inch or so of dead yeast and particles, the wine translucent now but still far from transparent.  And all of the gassing appears to have stopped - no more fine bubbles running up the sides and necks of the vessels.

2016 Chardonnay, day 19: free SO2

06:30
Steady, lazy, medium sized gas bubbles still making their way up the necks of the carboys.  No hurry, nothing frantic, no movement of the airlocks.

Thought I would take a look at free SO2, and true to what the man said about the EC-1118 yeast, it created a bunch of SO2.  I wasn't careful in my measurement and will go back, but the untreated wine is between 20 and 30 ppm.

2016 Chardonnay, day 15

09:30
The top quarter of each vessel is brightening and less custard-like.  Less ongoing ferment than I would have guessed at, but still some.  It's going to be much warmer outside through much of the coming week and that will push the cellar temp up a bit.  Test for free SO2 and decide whether to up it to help prevent malo?

2016 Chardonnay, day 13: collar and boot

22:00
Steady but light advance of gas up the necks of the vessels.  Minutes between burps of the airlocks.  A thin collar, and a boot of settling yeast bodies and solids.

2016 Chardonnay, day 11

06:00
Brix -1.4

Things are in that steady hypnotic state of fine bubbles racing up the necks of each carboy but hardly ever popping the airlocks.  All the vessels behaving similarly.  Reading was from carboy A.

It's 48 F outside and we haven't let the furnace come on yet.  Didn't take the temp of the cellar, but it's cool down there.

2016 Chardonnay, day 9: less than zero

09:30
Brix -0.5

Still steady CO2, but today is the day to move to carboys.

(Elvis less than zero)

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15:00
Et voila.  Brix -0.8.

We racked the primary ferm into 4x5gal+1gal+1x.750ml.  Tossed what must have been between 2 and 4 liters of muck from the bottom, which we never would do in the leaner Muscat years (and, just as Lori said I would, I already regret it.

Using the silicon drilled cup-shaped stoppers this year rather than either the traditional rubber stoppers or the plastic caps with 2 spouts.  The later I've lost some faith in - I feel like they don't always give as tight a seal as you would want after primary fermentation and settling.  The former I would have used but didn't have enough of them this morning and when I ran out to Pagano at Terminal Market the silicon is what he had left in size sevens.

Chardonnay, with some old Primitivo and Cab Franc behind it.

There was very little foaming going on in the primary tank or noticeable in the carboys, so we filled them very near to full.  Plenty of gassing, though.  If there's no yeast foaming in an hour or two, we'll finish topping.  (OK, I reserved an itty bit of the muck to do this with.)

An hour of work, and now the months of staring begin.  Typical thick cidery color.

2016 Chardonnay, day 8

08:30
Brix 2.65

Steady pumping of CO2 - glad to see it, that makes us comfortable targeting tomorrow for going to smaller vessels.  Still, we decided not to disturb things too much, did not open the tank except through the taps, left the (no longer frozen) ice block in, etc.  Time to rearrange things in the cellar, make for 5 carboys, and let the troops know there's a little work to be done on Sunday.

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23:30
Brix 1.2.

Steady CO2.  Tomorrow seems like the right day to condense into CBs.  Monday at the latest.  Tasting the rough wine is not so pleasant - it's lost most of the cidery-sweetness of the middle ferment, and is now alcoholic and acidic.  (Always worried about the acid, these last 3 or 4 years.)

2016 Chardonnay, day 7: long and short

06:30

Happens every year.  The long scale hydrometer says we're below 5 and the short scale disagrees.  So, I'm going to call it:

Brix 5, temp 74 F.

Swapped the cooler.  Yeast are in their oozy, sticky state.  CO2 is constant and strong enough that there's no need to transfer to smaller vessels yet.  I made a raucous sound recording of it and will try to post it.

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22:00
Brix 3.85.

Which is to say that the reading moved from 3.7 to 4 over the few minutes that the short scale hydrometer was in the tube.

Under 5!  Steady pumping of the bubbler has stopped, but still plenty of ferment, heavy yeasts, CO2 production and noise.  Looks like we should move to carboys or whatever the next vessel will be late tomorrow or Sunday.

2016 Chardonnay, day 6

06:00
Brix 8, temp 72 F.

Calmer yeasts, but still pushing the bubbler every couple of seconds.  Sadly realizing I may have misread some of the previous temps.  Note to self: going back to a digital thermometer next year.  Smells are intense and sweet still.  And we're staying faster than last year's fermentation.

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21:30
Brix 5.5, temp 72.

Steady CO2 production, yeasts are very wet and sticky.  Still a heavy fruit smell from the must.  Swapped the San Jamar.  May be trying the short scale hydrometer in the morning.

2016 Chardonnay, day 5, exploding marshmallow

06:00
15 Brix, 72 F

Wetter, stickier foaming.

Cap was askew and barely hanging on to the bubbler.  Very deep, active, wet chuffing.  Yeast had overflowed the bubbler and settled on the tank.

First noticeable temperature rise, 4 degrees.  2 Brix dip in last 7 hours.  Though it will add again to the overflow I swapped in a cold San Jamar - would loved to have put in 2 and try to dent the temp., but there just isn't the headspace with so much foam.

Tracking very closely to last year's Muscat, which was 14.5 B at 81 elapsed hours since pitching yeast.  We're 15 B at 79 elapsed hours.

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20:00
10 Brix, 68F.

Constant, quick bubbling but it did not overflow the it had last evening.  The entire house smells intensely of ferment.

Replaced the San Jamar, even though we seem to have finished the big blow.  33% sugar burn in the last 14 hours.

That suddenly bolts us ahead of last year's wine, which took about 15 hours longer to make the drop to 10 Brix.

2016 Chardonnay, day 4: the big burn begins

05:30
Brix 18, 68 F.

Bubbler is pumping and fouled.  The entire 10 liter head-space in the tank is foam.  The airtight plastic bag holding the icepack is puffed like a balloon.

Initial Brix reading was 19, but the longer it stayed in the tube the lower the reading went - I think it was being bubbled up.  I'm splitting the difference of where it started and ended and calling it 18.  This is burn of 24% of the sugars from the last measurement just 6.5 hours ago.

Though it will add to the overflow, I've replaced the San Jamar - but not the bagged ice-pack.

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23:00
Brix 17, 68 F.

Wild and wooly.  Overflowing yeast.  but surprisingly little dip in the last 17.5 hours.  What's happening?!  Swapped the SJ.  Lots of cleanup.

2016 Chardonnay, day 3

06:00
23 Brix, 68 F.

Much heavier shag.  Swapped a single San Jamar.

31 hours since pitching the yeast, a 2 Brix (8%) fall in sugar content.  That's tracking very close to the behavior of the 2015, 2014 and 2013 Muscats.  (The 2015 Muscat had a huge burn-off in the following 15 hours.)

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23:00
24 Brix, 68 F

Deep shag.

So, OK, here's the deal.  The 6 AM reading was taken directly in the primary ferm tank and I read it as best I could through the foam.  The 11 PM reading was taken in the standard tube because the tank was so wild with big-bubbled fermentation that it came all the way up to the bubbler.

Swapped out both the San Jamar and the chem ice pack.  No sign that they are keeping the must at less than ambient temp, but who knows if they are helping keeping it from going above that temp?

And here's where we have an excellent difference from last year.  At 48 hours in 2016 we've just begun to move the needle, but in 2015 we'd blown off 10 Brix, well over a third of the sugar.

2016 Chardonnay, day 2

07:00
Brix 25; wine temp 68 F.

Ferm @ 11 hours

Fermentation has taken hold quietly.  No obvious difference yet to sugar.  Five degrees warmer over the last 15 hours, but that may just be coming to the ambient cellar temp rather than heating from the fermentation.  Did not put any ice blocks in: maybe will think differently after coffee?  (EC-1118 temp range is 50 to 86 F.)

11:00
Added one San Jamar ice block.

20:00
25 / 24.9 Brix, 68F.

Not much change.  The yeast foam is shaggier, but not crazy.  No heat.  Changed the (completely melted) San Jamar ice thingy.

2016 Chardonnay, day 1

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.

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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!

2016 Chardonnay: grapes purchased

Yesterday we purchased 12 36# lugs of Lanza Chardonnay that should be arriving at Musto today.  Yeast and a few odds and ends should arrive today from Presque Isle.  And we're hoping that Presque Isle will have a record of the steel tank we purchased from them (or did we purchase it from Texas?) so that we can get a new gasket and possibly a new pump so that our steely Chardonnay really will grow up in steel.

More Chardonnay yeast considerations and sources

• Chardonnay yeast chart at Wine Business
• Lalvin tear-sheet on EC-1118
• WineMaker Magazine article on Chardonnay from different regions, with different yeasts

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4 PM: OK, the decision is made.  Lalvin EC-1118 to support our non-malo approach.

Which yeast for our Chardonnay

From More Wine's yeast matching guide for Chardonnay:

• ICV-D47: Complex white with citrus, dried apricot, pineapple and floral notes. Lees contact gives ripe spicy aromas with tropical and citrus tones developing, along with nuts. Adds volume/mouthfeel. Barrel fermentation and lees aging recommended. Good single-strain or as a blending component. 
• T306: Exotic fruit and pineapple, with elegant white fruit notes in Chardonnay. Contributes to mouthfeel and lees aging is recommended. Good as a single-strain or as a blending component. 
• CY3079: Classic white burgundy: rich, full mouthfeel with aromas of fresh butter, almonds, honey, white fruit, flowers and pineapple. Barrel fermentation and lees aging recommended. 
• QA23: Usually used in terpenic whites, it enhances the floral, aromatic aspects of a grape. In Chardonnay, floral, white peaches are emphasized with an equal clarity in both aroma and taste. Great as a “top-note” in a blend. 
• BA11: Fresh fruit aromas of orange blossom, pineapple, and apricot develop, along with clean aromatics, lingering flavours, and an intensified mouthfeel. 
• Rhône 4600: Apricot and tropical fruit with enhanced mouthfeel contribution. Delivers fat roundness and balance along with light esters. Good as a blending component. 
• ICV-D254: Usually used as a blending component, D254 gives stone fruit flavours, aromas of nuts, smoke, and sourdough, along with a creamy mouthfeel. Good for adding complexity and mouthfeel to a blend. 
• ICV-GRE: Brings fresh melon foreword along with good mouthfeel. Also effective for reducing herbaceous and vegetal notes in under-ripe fruit.

What about us folks who don't want their Chardonnay to taste like butter?

Back from... where?

Man, more than nine months since the last look at the blog.

After much travel and many busy weekends, it suddenly looks like we will not skip winemaking this year, but will get Chardonnay grapes from Musto's Lanza vineyard in Suisan Valley.  With luck Cousin Jake will drive them down to us on this coming Friday, and we'll be crushing on Saturday, October 1.  He's driving a car, not a rig, so we're not sure how much he'll be able to haul, but we're still hoping for 500 to 600 #.

Our first venture away from Muscat for our whites.  We know we'll be in steel or glass.  We know there won't be any oak.  We don't know what yeast we'll use, or whether we will try to kill malo or just let the wine and the cellar do what they want.

Yippee!