Ugh. Wrong gasket.

Well, the PI folks disagreed about which gasket to send, Doug made the decision, and unfortunately what they've sent is wrong two ways: wrong diameter & the valve does not fit through the opening in the tank's lid. Sigh.

Of course, that wasn't clear until I'd taken everything apart.

Sooo... I gave the lid and old gasket a super-hot cleaning, hot tap and boiling water. There was indeed more mold around the upper perimeter of the gasket in some spots, but nothing at the bottom and no trace of anything at the surface of the wine.

And tasting: much relieved of my secret fears. Except that it tastes young yet, we're going down a good path.

With all of these gasket looks and lid-offs, this batch is getting more oxygen than I'd like, but I don't see that there's anything to do for it except xfer to carboys (which itself would be a lot of airing) and give up on the tank for the season. Let's see if the cleaned gasket holds or if I can get a proper replacement.

Pagano truck siting in the hood

Mrs. Lapide's competitor, making watermelon deliveries on 7th Ave, 11215.

Sent via thingy.

New gasket

Have ordered a new gasket for the 100 gal. steel tank. Have been losing pressure every coupl eof days, and a mold is forming where the valve comes through the lid and attached to the tube to the pump / pressure gauge.

Have cleaned everything.
Tasted on Sunday - I'm worried, but then I brushed my teeth with anise toothpaste just before tasting. Lori thinks it's OK. Will taste again when the new gasket arrives.

I guess this is the potential downside of a single bulk-aging vessel. It would be a lot to lose.

Presque Isle was also a little shaky on this - Debbie Lam and Doug giving directly contradictory info on which gasket to but. We're going with the AG45, for a 100 liter tank approximately 30 inches tall and 18 inches in diameter.

Holy Moly - 2006 winemaking notes

Just ran into these notes, and decided to post them for posterity.

---

( Saturday, October 7, 2006 -- Making this first entry a week after we started, relying on memory.

060930 - Went Saturday AM, Sep. 30 to Lapides market in the Brooklyn Terminal Market. This is where Bernardo & his winemaking friends have been buying grapes in memory. At 8 AM most of the other customers there seemed to be other home winemakers.

Palettes of different types of grapes outside the building. Walking from palette to palette and pulling individual grapes from the sides of crates we tasted alacante (very juicy), merlot, zinfandel, grenache (unbelievably sweet), and others that I'm not remembering.

Spoke with Mrs. Lapide - I think we had already been leaning toward zinfandel, talked to her about blending and she thought blending with the alacante would save us money and "achieve the same goal", by which I took her to mean having zinfandel wine. The ration she figured would work was 10 cases zinfandel, four alacante bouchet, and that's what we settled on.

The zinfandel grapes were 36 lbs. to the crate, and the alacante 42 lbs. to the crate - that's 528 lbs. of grapes. I think the total cost, with some chemicals, yeast and an odd or end was 490. initial plan was to use existing carboys and jugs, existing poly drum, existing crusher and existing wood barrel.

Got the grapes to 438 11th. Washed them by the 1/2 crate and carried them to the cellar where we crushed them into the poly. When we were just more than half through the grapes we were two thirds full in the poly, so went to fetch a second one from 3rd Street (yes, the drum fits in the back of the Mini) - washed and crushed the remaining grapes into that.

All the barrels and tools and our own hands we washed in a solution of water and potassium metabisulfite - 3 tsp to a gallon. After the initial washings we kept a 5 gallon bucket of the solution on hand for washing our paddles and tools and hands.

The washing of the grapes we did consisted only of hosing them and checking for rot or raisins and removing them. (I subsequently read in the Presque Isle pamphlet that they are not a fan of washing - but to pick for rot & raisins.)

After lunch we dove into the grapes to pull out what stems we could. Bernardo's approach was ernest, but not religious. I'm guessing we removed half the stems.

The yeast we bought was Montrachet yeast. Bernardo had more packets of another Montrechet yeast variety, and he wound up making a mixed batch of both - I need to get the proportions. Yeast was mixed Saturday afternoon, frothed, and poured into the grapes around 8 PM Saturday evening.

At the end of the day the only things we had introduced into the grapes was the yeast and whatever water & potassium metabisulfite might have been left on our hands or the tools.

---

061001 -
Sunday. About 6:15 AM, first stirring after yeast had been added (about 10 hours prior). No greatly noticeable difference. Grapes floating on juice, bit not obviously giving up their own juice, and little bubbling or fermenting.

That evening the floating grapes were more obviously formed into a cap a few inches thick. Active fermenting had really started.

---

061002 -
Monday. Have pictures from that morning - cap is 4 inches thick. Foam and fermentation is very active.

Evening - foam and fermentation is now breaking through the cap. Everything is wildly alive. Lots of effervescence - very heady when you get your face into the barrel. The whole house now smells of something between grape and wine. The juice is quite warm.

Bernardo, on advice from the master, Bernard, judges this is a good time to add something to help the structure (huh?) of the wine. This is practice in the group, not based on measurement. So, in goes the tartaric acid. Need to check with Bernardo re the quantity we added.

When the cap was fully broken up and the juice stirred the foam from fermentation was vivid in color and almost taffy or meringue-like in volume and glossiness and volume.

---

061003 & 060104 -
Tuesday and Wednesday. The cap crests at about 6 inches. Lots of deepening nose, lots of effervescence. Fermentation still very active, but does not approach again the witches' cauldron of Monday evening. Moisture collects o the underside of the plastic we cover the drums with. A sense that the grapes are further desiccating. Continue breaking up the cap and stirring twice a day. No other chemicals are added.

I pick up a thermometer for the cellar. Bernardo had been concerned, I think, that we were too warm. We installed a little venting fan earlier in the week to cool & help get some of the gasses out. But the Presque Isle pamphlet and subsequent reading calls for red wine first fermentation at 75 to 80 F. We're between 70 & 75 now. But will likely go warmer as the furnace kicks in and it cools outside. Might want to replace the venting fan with the original pane of glass.

---

061005 & 060106
Thursday and Friday. Fermentation seems to be tailing off. The cap is decreasing, less structure each time we stir. Bubbling from fermentation is finer, and all bubbles dissipate within a minute or two of breaking up the cap. Still effervescence above the juice. The color of the juice is deep purple, and it's very opaque.

Friday evening we prepare the carboys for the first racking on Sunday, washing them with plain water.

---

061007 -
Saturday. Much like Friday evening. Deep color. Very little structure to the cap. Foam all dissolves within a minute or two of beginning to stir.

---

061008
Sunday - Am reading in Jon Iverson's Home Winemaking, Step by Stepre potassium metabisulfite -

Some people are allergic to sulfites and asthmatics are are particularly sensitive to it...

Duh. Likely the reason I often feel a small asthmatic episode starting when I have my fist sips of red wine. Also may be why I had one when I dipped my head into the barrel a few days ago when stirring. Thought I might have been winded from schlepping the carboys around, but maybe not.

Pressing day. Started clearing space in the cellar around 7:30. Gathered the press and odds & ends over to 11th Street. The press had a section of railroad rail as the top cross to it's frame - all heavy as hell. Managed to get everything into the cellar, sulfite washed & ready to rock still early.

Poured grapes from both poly drums in equal amounts so that all of the carboys will have pretty much the same blend of alicante and zinfandel.

Ran the press once and thought we would run it just a second time, but started thinking it would be awfully full and we would not get as much juice as three presses. Wound up filling 8 carboys plus 1 3 liter jug plus one 2 liter jug plus (for yucks) two wine bottles. Used a mix of intestine style and inverted jelly jar style gas gismos (which must have some more common name. Bernardo carried off the skins and stems for compost.

---

A visit to the North Fork - and all that early rain

Lori and I spent four days out on the North Fork last week. Visited Old Field, Shinn, The Tasting Room, Wolffer, and Channing Daughters (and bought wine everywhere). Drove by the vineyard where we bought the 2008 Cab S. grapes and saluted.

Spoke to the folks at Channing about how the weather (soggy, soggy June) might affect this year's grapes. The answer is that since there is no fruit on the vines yet, there's no affect to the fruit, but it's been a great deal of work for the vineyard workers to prevent mildew and any associated problems.

I'd already noticed that there was no fruit on the vines (or just the nubs of fruit beginning on some). Very different than the Concord vine in the Brooklyn back yard, which already have marble-sized fruit, and lots of it.

Three pretty different treatments of the 2008 Cabernet S.

I thought it might be good to pull what we know about our 2008 wine production into one post, which we can update & refine. I'm urged to do this by Laura and Bernardo's tasting notes from last week, and by what different schedules we've put the three batches on.

I'll refer to the batches as: Sclafani, Dawson / Pace, and Cheatle / Lewis.

---

Grapes - no differences
All three batches started with identical grapes, Cab. S., from Michael Kontokosta, grown in Greenport, L.I., picked in the late afternoon of the day prior to our use. The grapes were lower brix than we used previously, and that leads, below, to some of the differences in the treatment of the batches. We all had the grapes crushed in less than 24 hours from their being picked.

Crush, and destemming - differences
October 25. Crush was identical, but destemming was not. How to characterize it? Dawson / Pace destemming was light to moderate, and Sclafani and Cheatle / Lewis destemming was obsessive and maximal.

Primary fermentation - no differences
The Dawson / Pace and Cheatle / Lewis batches were in 55 gal food-grade drums, and the Sclafani batch in a 32 gal roughneck. No specific measurements here, but a third of the grapes went into the Dawson / Pace drum, more than a third into the Cheatle / Lewis drum, and less than a third into the Sclafani roughneck. Cheatle / Lewis to share some of their batch back to Sclafani.

All batches had pectic enzyme added immediately following crush - 1 dropper per 11 lb of grapes, as best we could estimate.

The same yeast - Lalvin RC 212 - was used in each batch.

The batches fermented similarly through the first [N] days, with temperature and speed variations tied, I think, mostly to their different batch sizes.

Punchdowns were identical (twice daily) for all batches.

Chapitizing - differences
I drove everyone a little nuts because I was using a refractometer as the wine approached dry, and was getting false readings. By October 30 fermentation was still.

Pace conferred with Presque Isle, and decided to add sugar to come to an approximate 12% alcohol level.

Sclafani opted out, and decided to go with whatever the grapes would yield.
Dawson / Pace added 5 lb sugar directly to the drum, & stirred.
Cheatle / Lewis mixed 5 lb sugar over low heat with 1/2 gal of juice & must, let it cool, and mixed this syrup back into the drum.

MLF - no differences
Nov. 1 brix was back under one for the Dawson / Pace and Cheatle / Lewis batches. Nov. 2 we divided 1.5 g. of freeze dried malolactic bacteria amongst the three batches, in proportions attempting to match the batch sizes.

Pressing - no differences
All batches were pressed on Nov.2. Yields were

• 20 gal Cheatle / Lewis, including going back to the pressed must for a little more;
• 16 gal Dawson / Pace;
• 10 gal Sclafani (and, remember, some of the Cheatle / Lewis wine for to Peter to even things out).

Stirring the lees - differences
A week after pressing, Cheatle / Lewis stirred the lees of their batch, looking to promote the MLF, etc. Offered the idea to the other partners, who did not take them up on this.

Secondary fermentation - possible differences
Noted in the blog 28 days after pressing, one Dawson / Pace carboy was still bubbling. It's behavior was different than all other carboys. Dawson / Pace moved their carboys to Bernardo's cellar 3 days later (Dec. 2). Don't know if the wine from that bottle was tracked after that.

1st racking - differences

• Cheatle / Lewis, Jan 4, 2009. Added K₂S₂O₅ , about 3/4 teaspoon per 5-gal, which I think translates to 45 parts per million. Pretty liberal with aerating the wine.
• Dawson / Pace, Jan 13, 2009. No sulfur added. (Oaked at this time - see below.) All three carboys tasted identical. Noted a little fizz.
  
• Sclafani, Jan 25. No sulfur. Topped up one of the CBs with about 3 liters of mixed wine for Cheatle / Lewis.
  

2nd racking - differences

• Cheatle / Lewis, Mar 21, 2009. No sulfur. All wine was racked together into the 100 liter steel tank.
  
• Dawson / Pace, no 2nd racking - see oaking notes.
• Sclafani, June 5, 2009. (Not a typo.) No sulfur. Racked into clean carboys, and topped up with wine from Cheatle / Lewis batch.

Oak - differences

• Cheatle / Lewis, April 10, 2009. Used Barrel Mill spirals. 4 medium toast American oak, 2 medium toast French oak, in the prescribed proportion - one 8" spiral per 3 gallons of wine. These spirals are still in the wine as of this writing.
  
• Dawson / Pace, January 16, 2009. Used heavy toast for one week and removed. (Barrel Mills? American or French?)
• Sclafani, June 5, 2009. Used Barrel Mills medium toast American oak in the prescribed quantity.

Finishing / bottling - differences

• Cheatle / Lewis: except for a little wine to be used at the 2009 party, and tasting as it goes, we intend to bulk age the wine, with the oak in, until the tank is needed again next year. That puts bottling at late winter, 2010.
• Dawson / Pace: bottled in early February, 2009. [Need date.]
• Sclafani: no stated plan. Minimal oak-ready, July 17, 2009.
  

Sclafani 2008 2nd racking and oak, at last

Peter stopped by to rack his 2008 wine.

Very little sediment (he sacrificed wine in the first racking and it looks like it paid in the second). Color the same as the Cheatle / Lewis batch.

Added Barrel Mill medium toast American oak spirals, and topped up the 2nd carboy with wine (a gallon or less) from the Cheatle / Lewis batch.

Tasted the 2008

Just a short note to say that the bottle Laura and I sampled on Friday, May 29, began well but finished badly. What I mean is that each sip started nicely--dry with nameless fruit and some spice--but finished with a sour after taste. Steve and Lori, did you try some on Memorial Day?

Sage & pistachio follow-up

Strained and sweetened and filtered the liqueurs we're targeting for the June 13 party.

The sage / lemon is a beautiful, clear yellow. Very attractive. Very lemon scented. Really didn't need filtering.

The pistachio was a real hassle. I realized I chopped the nuts too fine when I started it, but decided to go forward anyway. Took only a couple of days to develop into 80% green mud and a little clear-floating alcohol on top. Ran it through a cheesecloth strain first, and squeezed out what I could. Then a paper towel. Then coffee filters. The last stage must have taken an hour and multiple filters, as each would get clogged with nut-dust. And while it all was happening, impatience set in and I added the proscribed amount of syrup without figuring what booze-loss I had because of all the filtering. La. Finished product id a greeny yellow, clear but not sparkling like its sage sibling. Will taste in a month.

Sage liqueur for June 13 2009 party

And why not. The amaro won't be nearly ready, and this might be a little bitter - a balance to the anisette.

• 14 sage leaves
• 2 cloves
• 1.5 cups dry white wine
• 1.25 cups vodka
• skin of one lemon, no pith

Combine the above and let set for 2 weeks.
Strain and filter.
Combine with

• 1 cup simple syrup

Let age for 4 to 8 more weeks weeks.
That makes it a little tight. The minimum aging, 4 weeks, puts us at May 29. Party day gives us 6 weeks. (Maybe it's tme to start a quicker aging nut liqueur.)

I'm using a 12.5% Italian pinot grigio, and a 40% (Tito's) vodka. And I think that gives a final product of about 18.3% alcohol.

Anisette for the June 13, 2009 party

Just started a 750 ml btch of anisette for the party. Same herb mix as the first attempt, but I'm moving away from K1 - or about 2 cup K1 and 1 cup Tito's Hand Made.

What other after-wine booze shall we make?

Date set for 2009 wine & puttanesca party

and, image maybe set, too. June 13 - the second Saturday in June. The back side text lists all the wine-makers, the tradition, the times &c.

S&L 2008 wine finally oaked

This morning we added 6 Barrel Mill spirals to the tank - 4 medium toast American oak, 2 medium toad French oak.

Will leave them in until we bottle, and I don't think we have any plans to bottle until the tank might be needed again for the the next vintage. Will draw this June's party wine directly from the tank.

Anisette, take 2

Yesterday filtered the alcohol (maybe a half dozen passes through cheese cloth) and added the simple syrup. It all has a yellow tinge from the herbs - makes me think that commercial anisette must be made from oils and extracts rather than from infusions.

Smells delicious. Looks completely integrated this morning. Will taste in the next day or so. Recipe did not call for further aging. Just about filled a 375 ml bottle.

Anisette, take 1

Well, I've been jonesing for an anisette, and we didn't have any in the house, so:

Per Dona & Mel Meilach in Homemade Liquors, page 83:

• 2/3 tbsp anise seed
• 1/2 tsp fennel seed
• 1/2 tsp coriander seed
• 1.5 cup vodka

Mortar the seeds, and put into the vodka for 1 week, shaking daily, for one week. Then strain and add

• 1/2 cup simple syrup

No other aging needed. I figure the final produce will be about 30% alcohol - I used 40% alcohol Kettle One for the booze.

S&L 2nd racking of 2008 wine

Took us longer to get to this than I realized - 1st racking was back on Jan. 4.

We racked the three 5 gallon carboys and the one 3 galon carboy all together into the 100 liter steel tank, and will oak it all there. Hopefully we'll choose & order the oak in the next day or two. Certain of medium toast (I think we want to leave it in until bottling, but we're not likely to bottle until summer or later.) But Barrel Mill spirals or Stavin cubes or staves? American or French or Hungarian? (I can't imagine myself distinguishing between these three, but maybe the better palates in the group can.)

Wine was very clean, color is right-on, a little tart. Pretty leggy: Lori thinks a higher alc. content than I'm guessing, but it's all guessing since we chapped late. Heading to someplace good.

Feb. 2009 Amari, step 4

Step 4 complete. Filtered the amaro through cheese cloth and stoppered. Tasted it off my fingers - it's pretty raw. There's a reason it wants 8 months. Thickness and viscosity of the liquor was just about right on, though. Open on December 4, 2009 - now that's a nice Xmas gift!

Feb. 2009 Amari, step 3

Step 3 completed. I've strained the herbs from the sugar / vermouth mixture, and mixed the liquor with the grain alcohol tincture. This will sit for a day or two, and then it gets strained, corked, and shelved until November or December of 2009 - it'll make a nice Xmas gift to myself, eh?

The combined drink is now 36.8% alcohol. (250 ml of 75.5% grain alcohol + 500 ml 17.5% vermouth.) The color is a yellow / amber, and very milky right now, but I'm guessing the latter is from all of the suspended particles.

And, a first amaro label

The height of self indulgence. Maybe the bitterest herb in the Feb. amaro is centaury - supposedly used by Centaur Chiron to treat his own wound from that nasty poisonous arrow of Hercules. That didn't work out so well, but the herb got named. So, why not, Centaury Amaro. The image is by Donato Creti, "The Education of Achilles by Chiron" 1714 Oil on canvas Musei Civici d'Arte Antica, Bologna.

Oh, hell, later that same afternoon - here's another:

Feb. 2009 Amari, step 2

The grain alcohol has been strained, and the herbs that were in it have been transferred to the vermouth / sugar mixture. The alcohol is a red brown color (lower left of the image). Can't guess whether the vermouth will retain the milkiness that's in the photo here - it did not have that before adding the herbs.

We'll be away next week when the step 3 should happen, so this steeping step will last a day or two longer than called for.

Obama Sauvignon labels for B & L

Okiedoke. B asked if I could cook these up. Took me a while to get my head into it. Here are two variations on a theme, b&w. Might be nice to color the wreaths. Even hand color them after printing. (click for full sized images)

Amaro me, Dr. Memory

Started on the Amaro recipe at about.com. The hard to get herbs all came from Aphrodisia, and the grain alcohol and vermouth from Slope Cellars. Since the recipe is silent on amounts for the roots, I used 5 grams f each, and where I had dried herbs rather than fresh, I used a teaspoon. And where I has leaves instead of root, I winged it. So:

• Lemon balm 1 tsp
• 5 leaves fresh sage
  
• 10 leaves fresh rosemary
• Centaury plant 1 tsp. dried
• 15 juniper berries
• 5 cloves, check
• 1/2 inch cinnamon stick
  
• Orris root 5g.
• Calmus root 5g.
• Gentian root 5 g.
• Blessed thistle I have is dried leaves, not root, and I am using 2 tsp
• Milk thistle 1 tsp dried
  

Step 1 is complete. Sugar is dissolving in vermouth, herbs are steeping in grain alcohol. More work a couple of times in the next week or two, then 8 months of waiting.

2007 labels

B has asked for me to post the 2007 labels. Here are most of them - there are others that it would be hard to imagine fitting onto a bottle. All jpeg or gif, all web-safe colors. When I print these I do them on plain paper, usually from a text document with the images in a table. Word or zoho or whatever.

---

Obama Sauvignon

Laura and I bottled the first of our three cboys--yield of 25 bottles. We'll bottle the other two cboys this weekend. We tasted it, and I tasted it before the bottling with Steve and Lori. Pretty good. Great color, and a nice array of notes--chocolate, pepper, and a little bit of plum. I said faint cherry to Laura--who responded correctly, plum. It's intriguing to think of how it will drink in a year or two--at this point it's just a little more than three months old.

Aged of Re-Zin

I've been wanting to do this for a while. Took 3 liters of the 2006 Zin-Alicante, unbottled it, put it together in a jug with a bit more of the Barrel Mill medium toast oak, a bit of meta, and put an airlock on it. Half wanting to just plain experiment with more oaking, and half wanting to have some of that vintage with less fizz. And it'll give me a good reason to make a new label and a bad pun.

Peter first-racks his 2008 Cab. S.

Peter came by and first-racked his 2008. We both tasted it - but Peter has a sinus infection and couldn't tell anything. We should taste his & S&L's, or even better, when B & Laura bottle, taste all three. I thught P's wine tasted a little more berryish than ours did a few weeks ago - but really we need to go head to head. Remember, Peter's has a lower alcohol content than S&L's and B&L's.

We topped off the racking with the jug that S&L had in addition to their carboys from their first racking - so at this point there's 2 full cbs of Sclafani wine, and the second one has about 3 liters of mixed topper.

Onward and upward.

First rack

Just a note to say Laura and I racked Tuesday before last, 1.13. There was quite a bit of sediment but it was pretty well behaved. It stayed where it belonged and we were able to siphon off most of the wine. We tasted each of the three cboys, and they were triplets. There's a little fizz at this point, and the the taste is quite deep and dark for a wine so young. Pepper, chocolate? Probably a little of both, and some sour cherry. Hard to say much more at this point--it needs the clarification of oak.

We added a dark roast infusion spiral to each cboy last Friday and we will take it out in a day or two and then bottle. We wanted medium roast, but the people at PIwines told us that leaving the dark roast in for a week or so should have the same effect.

Maraschino - Jan. 2009

I'm not going to cross-post all the stuff from the personal blog, but I'll track our Maraschino effort here, and any other fortified drink we try to make.

The Maraschino was assembled on Jan. 4 - images below.

Two weeks later, after turning the drink now and then, the oils looks like they have integrated, the orange peel is saturated.

S&L 1st racking of 2008 wine

Lori and I racked our 4 carboys today (one of which goes to Peter). A couple of hours with clean-up. Drew everything off very cleanly, maybe could have been a bit more aggressive, but I don't think it would have made too much difference. We filled three 5-gal carboys, one 3-gal carboy, and a jug that's 3 or 3 liters - I'll check. We were shy in that jug and topped it off with a Rhone blend. Given how clean everything looks, I'll be surprised if we use all of the jug to top off at the next racking.

Taste? Yes. Color is very, and I think the nose is already bigger than last year's finished wine - and maybe the finished 2006 wine, too. Taste is still pretty fruity. If I had more energy or brain cells it would probably be good to test the total acid: maybe I can make that happen.

We added K₂S₂O₅ , about 3/4 teaspoon per 5-gal, which I think translates to 45 parts per million, and we were pretty liberal about aerating the wine during the siphoning.

We didn't rack Peter's two CBs - Yo, Peter, you need to give it an hour.

And here are some pics:

Cellar archeology, 001 - cross post

I'm cross-posting this from my personal blog. Might be nice here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey, kids, we're dedicated to making the cellar more usable / less creepy-scary in 2009. Not exactly a resolution, more like a survival tactic.

So! Cellar Archeology entry 001!
There's a grape carton that a lot of our supplies are in - B's had it since I don't know when and it made it's way over to out cellar on September of 2006. It's got all sorts of stuff in it, some new and useful, some old and useful, some corroded metal implements that are just begging to experiment with your blood, some empty containers and some full but spoiled. I've decided to get rid of some of the older jazz, but am using Cellar Archeology to document them.

1. One half filled 500 cc jar of formerly liquid food grade enamel yellow paint, O'sullivan Paint Co., purchased some time in the past from Presque Isle Wine Cellars. Last year we bought a fresh jar of the same. Still liquid. It's what we paint the iron bottom piece of our press with. The current term of art is Gondola Enamel. Available in black, red, white, and yellow.
2. 4 oz. plastic container of formerly powdered sodium metabisulfate, packaged by Crosby & Baker, and - judging by the $1.75 price sticker - purchased at Party Creations. Who'd a thunk? We haven't used sodium metabisulfite for cleaning these past three years - we use potassium metabisulfite. Probably why this sat around until it solidified.
3. Plastic container, empty, which formerly held 50 Campden tablets. Another form of sodium meta. Price tag says it was purchased at L.J Lapide, Inc., $2.49. Mrs. Lapide is who the group has traditionally bought it's (CA) grapes from - until this past year when we bought LI grapes directly from the grower.
4. Cracked, dirty, empty plastic container. Skanky. 120 cc of nothing you want to put your tongue near.
5. This I like, and if I wasn't dedicated to cleaning out the cellar, I'd keep it, just as it is. 10 oz. Kerr "self sealing" mason jar, once filled with peach butter from Centennial Farms, Augusta, MO 63332 (Send for our catalog), and re-used to hold tartaric acid, with a sticker over the original label and on the lid. Rust on the lid, residue inside the jar. A thing of beauty. Who ate the peach butter?
   

Last of the 2007 production ready for tasting

Six weeks since Peter's 2007 cbs were oaked.
He should give it a taste and decide whether to leave in the existing oak, add new, or pull it.

Corks and chips

Hi,

Laura and I are going to rack soon, and, depending on what we find, we may want to add wood chips. I'm thinking it's a way of bringing the content of the cboys up to the rim. I'm also thinking that even if we have to rack one last time before bottling, there's no harm in introducing the wood at this point.

We should also take a look at corks and other supplies before we place the order. Do you guys want to go through the supplies and place the order, or do you want us to come join you--perhaps one evening this week?

Best,
Bernardo and Laura

Fresh Air interview with Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher

Our west coast buddy JP sent us this link to Terry Gross interview of Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, who write the Tasting column at Wall Street Journal wine columnists. Very nice.

U.C. Davis wine scoring system

I've mentioned a few times that the UC Davis system, as described by Alison Crowe in her book, seems sane and accessible.

Here's an on-line description of it at Finias. There's also a 20 point scoring sheet here. I really find this method a lot more approachable than a lot of what I read about.

CB migration

We moved B&L's cbs across the street last evening (day 38), tasting one of them first. Tasting comments?

Tasting the 2006 Zin~Alicante

Just an FYI - opened a bottle of the 2006 Zinfandel / Alicante blend. From the label (which I remember making), it could have gone into the bottle as early as the beginning of June, 2007.

I decided before opening it I would decant it. A quick taste confirmed why - fizzy. But 10 minutes later, not so and very nice. Very cherry. Color is super - thank you to the black A.B. grape. No idea whether it's tasting differently from a year ago. We do have a completely unoaked (naked) bottle left (1), but we don't have any that went through a a longer oaking. Am half tempted to take 5 bottles, put them in a gallon jug and do the deed - maybe with the leftover spirals from Peter's 2007 cbs.

2008 day 37, 28th since pressing

Quiet. Occasional bubble in that one Pace / Dawson volcano - really makes you wonder why it's so much gassier than its friends.

Having my first taste of the Cheatle / Lewis cd that's a mix of free run and press -
great color -
still very fruity, sharp berries, and not very complex nose
a tad tart and maybe, I can't tell, a tab hot (but that's probably worry and not actual tasting)
but already very drinkable
Obviously need to get Lori or someone else with an actual palette to give it a go. When we do, we should compare it to Peter's unchapitized wine to see about that hotness.

It's begging for oak.

Girl in the stars Cabernet

Been fooling with lots of Library of Congress images. This one's from a 1928 stereo card.

Day 27, relative quiessence

Much calmer down there - the staring to bubble ratio has gone way up. Even the Pace Dawson volcano cb.

Here's a couple of pics. Left, Bernardo & Laura on press day. Right, bubblers on day 27.

The guy on the left doesn't wear glasses...

... so I must be the guy on the right.Image at Library of Congress.

A few other images: Sicilians at a bar; Wine Song; chorizo, eggs, bread and wine; kosher wine inspection;