The 3 carboys of chardonnay are happily fermenting away in the basement. Since the past couple of weeks have been fairly cool outside, I haven't needed to use water baths to keep the fermentation temperatures at or below 60 °F. I need to check the brix level in a day or two because I've noticed that the gas evolution is starting to slow down. So far, the aromas emanating from the airlocks are simply divine!
While the yeast are having a party on one side of the basement, I've been busy on the other side bottling some wine. Two weeks ago, I filtered and bottled the 2008 California Sauvignon Blanc (23 bottles) and this past weekend I bottled the dry Massachusetts Apple (15 bottles) and the dry CA Zinfandel Rose (20 bottles) wines. Still got 1 gal of the apple to bottle after the oak cubes do their thing. Check out the picture of the end results! Absolutely lovely clarity if I do say so myself. The Sauvignon Blanc needed to be filtered (I used a 0.5 micron filter) to remove some biolees that I added for a little more body, but the apple and rose wines cleared naturally with no fining or filtering. As an aside, the apple was the fastest clearing wine I've ever had.
The next step is to label and share my tasting notes, so stay tuned!
Salute,
MA Winemaker
