Chilean Harvest 2013

Sadly it's been awhile since I've posted a new update.  I know several of you have expressed concern that the winery had been finished...so what next??  Well, the next step is to start making wine!  I pushed the contractors a bit to get the winery done in time for the Chilean harvest this spring.  You may be asking yourself..."Sacre bleau!  He buys grapes from so far away?  Say it cannot be so."

Well, it is so.  I will acknowledge that there is a lot of fluff and movement in the wine industry today to focus closely on making local wine and express that local terroir, otherwise no one can possibly take you seriously.

To that point of view, I say "Nuts!"

The whole concept behind Aaronap Cellars is that I strive to make the best wine possible for the best grapes I can get my grubby little hands on so that any bottle can stand on its own two feet against the rest of the world.  I want you to buy my wine because it's darn good...and it's made by this guy in Westford, MA.

So what's that got to do with Chile?  Well, Chile vineyards are perhaps the best place on the planet to source carmenere and malbec grapes.  Prior to the late 1800s, both of these varietals were once grown in the Bourdeaux region of France and used to produce the fine wines the region was known for.  But then a little root louse called phylloxera caught a ride on some grape vine roots from America to France and all of a sudden the famous vineyards of France began to die.  It took several decades, but finally the antidote (grafting vulnerable French vines onto immune American rootstock) was discovered and France began to replant her vineyards.  As you'd expect, the vineyards in Bourdeaux were replanted with the most commercially successful varietals like merlot, cabernet sauvignon, & cabernet franc.  Carmenere & malbec became essentially extinct in the region.  Malbec survived in France with plantings in the Languedoc area, but became a minor player.  Little did we know that the European colonization of South American in the 1700-1800s also included transplanting many varieties of grape vines.  Fast forward about 80 years and imagine the consternation when "merlot" vines in Chile & Argentina were genetically identified as actually being carmenere & malbec.  Turns out that a lot of carmenere & malbec had been transplanted in South America as "merlot".  In the end Chile has become the last great bastion of plantings of carmenere in particular, as well as malbec.

I am a history buff and I love the story of the miraculous survival of carmenere.  I'm also a sucker for the underdog so I love the idea of making wine from a little known grape that smuggled its way into Chile and has become their celebrity varietal.  Thanks to my grape broker, I have access to the only place that grows significant amounts of carmenere and malbec.  Finding those varietals in MA & CA is next to impossible, so I've chosen to tap the resources of South America.

And I'm darn proud of that!

This spring, I purchased a quarter ton of carmenere and 0.75 tons of malbec from the Curico & Colchagua Valleys of Chile.  They arrived in a big stack of crates in the back of my pickup.

The new Zambelli destemmer performed admirably in crushing the grapes and pumping the must into the winery.

 

 And then the yeast did their thing.  Pods of fermenting must spotted the winery amidst the other equipment.

A few weeks later and then it was pressing time!  The sequence is the fermented must mixture is transferred from the fermentation tub to the press where the wine drains away from grapeskins/seeds.  The liberated wine drains into the bucket where it is pumped into a waiting stainless steel tank to allow the large solids to gravity settle.  Check out the high tech stepladder serving as pump holder!

 
 Pressed wine draining from the press!  Very artsy.

 At this point, alcohol fermentation is over.  The next step is to allow a secondary fermentation to occur that will convert the malic acid in the wine to lactic acid--this helps smooth out the wine.  Then, the wine will be transferred to oak barrels for aging over 9-12 months.  The carmenere will be featured in our signature "Carm-ah" blend with syrah, while the malbec will be featured in another blend (more details to follow).

Hopefully this was a helpful insider's view of the winemaking at Aaronap Cellars.  These varietals have come a long way from France to Chile and then to MA where we craft them into premium wines.  The best of the best is often found around the world and not just in your backyard.  Look for these wines to be released in Fall 2014 or Spring 2015 so that you can taste the true carmenere terroir!

Cheers,
Noel

The Finale...and a New Beginning!

A very good friend of mine (yeah, I'm looking at you Mr R) recently chastised me for being negligent in updating the blog.  Apparently he was having difficulty finding things to read at work...  OK, that was a low blow because the guy is completely correct.  I have been negligent in posting about the final wrap up of construction.  That's right, we're 99.9% complete!  The pictures below tell the tale.

 View of the main room from the southeast corner looking towards the bottle storage room.  Barrels will line the wall.

 The cleaning area--one of the nerve centers of the operation & home to more plumbing than you can shake a stick at.

View towards the back door from the barrel corner.

View towards the back door from the sink area.

Last but not least...the bottle storage room.  This will be used for equipment storage until next year when we start bottling wine.

So what have I been doing besides finishing painting, staining & varnishing the interior door, & moving equipment into the winery?  Getting ready to make wine!  The Board of Health approved our residential kitchen permit so it's time to start fermenting stuff.  Not wasting a moment, we've hit the ground running with some frozen juice and the South American grape harvest.  Some wineries will hide the fact that they purchase grapes from South America in the spring to boost wine inventory.  Aaronap Cellars will never hide that information but celebrate that we can source unique grapes from south of the Equator in the spring to bring you another option for interesting flavors & some grape varietals that are hard to source here in the USA.  Stay tuned for details...that's worthy of another blog post.

Salute,
Noel

Hopefully stabilized the sauvignon blanc

It's a scorcher of a day in MA, so I decided not to sweat to death while ripping out some sod for my sidewalk project and spend the day dealing with wine because it's cooler in the basement. The sauvignon blanc has been chilling in an ice bath since Saturday morning, so it really needed to be racked anyway. At least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

It looks like the MLB activity has subsided upon cooling, so I racked off the lees into newly sanitized carboys. With a pH = 3.2 and free SO2 levels around 35-40 ppm, I'm frankly a little flummoxed why the bacteria was active. Those free SO2 levels should give >1 ppm molecular SO2 at that pH and that's way more that the 0.8 ppm that's generally recommended to suppress microbial activity. Generous SO2, low pH, and lysozymes should be more than enough to keep the MLB in check. I added another 25 ppm SO2 for good measure and now I'm going to let the wine warm up. I need to bentonite fine this wine in a few weeks, so I don't want to add more lysozymes now as the bentonite will strip the lysozymes out of the wine along with any other proteins. Going to give the SO2 a chance to work while I'm getting ready to fine. Let's keep those fingers crossed.

Cheers,
Noel

Sauvignon blanc & MLF--a no no

Well, finally had a chance to do a chromatography test on the '10 Chilean Sauvignon blanc that's been every so slowly bubbling away after racking off the gross lees. Yep, there's a bit of lactic acid present which means that my sulfite & lysozyme regime did not prevent a malo-lactic fermentation from starting. Guess the grapes had more mold/bacteria on them than I suspected.

A question for the ages--why does an advantageous MLF occur so readily in spite of your best efforts to prevent it and why is it so darn hard to get one to occur when you want it to happen?

Darn bugs...

Back to the wine--I decided to chill the carboys as best I could to encourage the bacteria to go dormant and then rack into new carboys with a hefty dose of lysozymes to prevent the MLF from restarting. Dashed off to the grocery store this morning for ice and the carboys are currently sitting in an ice/water bath. I don't see any more bubble production, so I think it's working, but want to get these things as cold as possible. My basement has warmed up to a whopping 70 °F this summer so I'm having a little challenge in getting this babies below 60 °F.

Need more ice...

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Chilean Sauvignon Blanc

The carmenere got its own post, so I think the sauvignon blanc deserves the same! We left the juice chilling in an ice bath in the basement while it clarified. That sounds fancy but it really means that I was cooling the juice to keep a wild fermentation or bacterial growth from starting while the solid gunk settled out. 24 hrs later, and it is amazing how clear the juice became. I would really like to improve my cold-settling capabilities because I can only chill to about 45 °F and that's not long enough to really get a good compact layer of solids. When I rack into a new vessel, I lose quite a bit of wine because the solid layer is still pretty fluffy. But in the end I ended up with about 12 gallons of clarified juice.

The juice ended up with a Brix = 20.1 (11% potential alcohol) and pH = 3.25. I was actually a little surprised at the Brix & pH levels because the bunches had quite brown stems & seeds and looked like they had hung on the vine a little longer than normal so I was expecting a higher sugar and pH. But those numbers are out of the desired range, so I forged ahead (if anything the low pH will help prevent bacterial growth.

I let the juice warm up to about 55 °F and inoculated with R-2 yeast strain. This is a strain that was isolated in the Sauternes region of Bourdeaux. That area grows a LOT of sauvignon blanc and this strain is tolerant to cold fermentation temps and is supposed to produce very fruity sauvignon blanc wines. It also can produce a bit of volatile acidity without proper nutrients, so I made sure that the rehydration medium had plenty of Go-Ferm and that I followed the normal Fermaid K addition program during fermentation. Fermentation took a couple of days to commence, but it slowly started after about 36 hr. I had the buckets simply sitting on the basement floor, so fermentation temps stayed below 65°F to retain aromatics.

I had 2 6 gal carboys (one with free run juice & the other with a mix of free run and press fraction) and a 3 gal carboy with just press fraction. The wine in the 3 gal carboy took off like a shot and finished fermentation in about 10 days. I racked that into a 1 gal carboy and then topped off the free run/press carboy with about half a gallon. I was going to rack both of the remaining carboys yesterday, but they are still producing significant gas bubbles. My refractometer says that they are dry as a bone, but there must be some sugar left in the bottom. So both carboys are patiently sitting in the basement while the fermentation completes.

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Chilean Carmenere

My previous post talked about both the Carmenere & Sauvignon blanc wines that I'm making from Chilean grapes this spring, but I thought I would split them apart since they are two totally different wines.

When last we left, the carmenere was macerating prior to yeast inoculation. I neglected to mention that in addition to the 50 ppm SO2 treatment, I had added Scottzyme Color Pro pectinase & VR Supra tannin. The Color Pro is to help break down the cell walls of the grape solids & release tannins, anthocyanins (color molecules), and sugars. The tannin addition is a little counter intuitive, but a pre-fermentation addition of tannins helps to fix the color.

The next evening, Brix = 22.2 (12.4% potential alcohol) & pH = 3.58 so I'm reasonably happy with those numbers and didn't make any adjustments. I re-hydrated a yeast called Bourdeaux Red and inoculated the must. I selected this yeast because it was isolated from the Bourdeaux region of France (where carmenere originated). Plus, it's a low producer of H2S and volatile acidity and requires moderate levels of Nitrogen. I've read several on-line reviews of this yeast that extolled it's virtues, especially for Bourdeaux varietals, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

It's a little after the fact, but the fermentation took off within 24 hrs of inoculation and went fairly quickly. We had a week of warm weather during the fermentation, so I was able to get a heat spike in the fermenters to at least 85 °F to help set the color. While normally I'm worried about being able to achieve that temperature, this year I was actually worrying whether I needed to cool the fermentation! Fortunately, a cold front came through at just the right time and the garage cooled back down to normal New England spring temperatures.

Fermentation actually completed by Memorial Day, but I was really trying to get some yardwork done and I wanted to wait on the pressing. I inoculated with VP-41 malolactic bacteria and covered the must with a double layer of Saran wrap. The skin cap stayed very buoyant and I did one punchdown a day until Saturday when I pressed the wine off the skins. I pulled out my old press for this big job!

I transferred all press fractions to Bertha (one of my 80 gal variable capacity stainless steel tanks) and sealed the cover while the MLF completed. I was intending to rack off the gross lees after one week, but couldn't get the job done today due to the weather & other commitments. I'm trying to alleviate the risk of the gross less compacting and releasing off-flavors by stirring the lees every 2-3 days until MLF is complete. My analysis indicates that should only be another 1-2 weeks as long as the weather stays seasonably warm.

And that's where the wine is at--sitting in my stainless steel tank under an airlock while the bacteria do their thing. So far, I'm very impressed with the taste. Bright cherry and raspberry flavors with a peppery, long lasting finish. It needs some aging, probably in my Hungarian oak barrel, but this may be my best red wine to date if I don't screw it up.

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Chilean Wine Season is here!

Trying to get caught up on posts on this rainy afternoon. After I got home from the WineMaker Conference, I hopped in the truck and took off to Hartford, CT to pick up my 2010 Chilean grape order. You'll remember that I was a little concerned about whether we'd be able to access Chilean grapes this year due to their devasting earthquake earlier this spring. But, the ports seem to be working and grapes got to get picked, so although they were delayed a week or two, the grapes did finally arrive.

This year, I purchased Sauvignon blanc and carmenere grapes. After the fiasco with the protein stability of the 2008 Sauvignon blanc, I'm on a mission to produce a wine that doesn't get cloudy during the summer months. And you can't get a varietal more associated with Chile than carmenere, which used to be a French Bourdeaux varietal largely used for blending. The French trans-planted it in South America in the early 1800s where it became confused with merlot since they have similar looking grape bunches. Poor carmenere has fallen out of favor in France and plantings have dropped tremendously such that now Chile & Argentina are the last remaining carmenere producers.

As before, the grapes are coming from the Curico Valley and were in really good condition considering their >4 week boat ride and CT storage for 7 days while I was in WA. After I got home and got the equipment cleaned, I crushed the 216 lbs of sauvignon blanc, treated it with 50 ppm of SO2 and pectic enzyme, and set it aside in the shade to macerate briefly while I dealt with the carmenere. The 270 lbs of carmenere got a little extra grapeskins from the SB that was sticking to the press, but that's all good! After crushing, the carmenere got a 50 ppm SO2 treatment and set aside overnight before yeast inoculation.

I had to quickly clean up and get over to my friend Rich's house to pick up my guinea pig from my excellent pet sitters. It was rather late when I got home, but I had to press the sauvignon blanc off the skins and get it chilled down to clarify the juice. For this little task, I brought out another new toy--a bladder press! The wood slats on my regular press are pretty stained from previous red wines and I was worrying about unintentionally making a rose from my white grapes. Plus, I was wanting something easier to clean and somewhat sanitize when making white wines. And I had a little money from Uncle Sam burning a hole in my pocket, so I purchased an all aluminum bladder press. Instead of pressing the pomace from the top with a couple of wood blocks, the bladder press has a central rubber balloon in the middle of the press that is inflated with water pressure to press the pomace against the metal exterior. This is supposed to result in a gentler pressing and not release harsh tannins due to over bruising or crushing of the skins & seeds. So I pulled it out and gave it a whirl for the first time.

I'm in love with this press. Relatively lightweight & portable, very gentle pressing, and it's essentially automatic! Once you've got it loaded and turn the water on, the bladder fills by itself and presses until it reaches >3 atmospheres of pressure and then the cut-off valve switches on. Here's a picture of Lil' Kim in action.


I learned that as the pressure rises, juice starts squirting through the cylinder mesh with quite a bit of force & distance! Fortunately, the press manufacturer supplies a plastic bag to put over the outside and direct the squirts down to the collection vessel (blue thing in the next picture). I ended up with ~15 gallons of juice (~10 gallons of free run and ~5 gallons of press fraction).


It's a little disconcerting to be able to turn on the water and go do something else, but the automation is highly appreciated in this one-man winery. All of that made for a very long night (got to bed around 2:30 AM), but the carmenere was macerating, and the sauvignon blanc was in the basement in an ice bath to while the juice clarified.

Cheers,
Noel