Another Summer Santa Treat!

Well, folks, it has been awhile since my last post. Been dealing with some personal upheaval in my life that occurred this summer that drained a lot of energy and time. Now that part of my life is over and closed, time to get back to some drinkin' and bloggin'! Don't worry, faithful readers, I've been saving tasting notes and stories in a big stack that I will slowly recapitulate over the next few weeks.

Starting where I left off in June, I wanted to relate some information on another bottle of wine I received during the Winepress.us Summer Santa Swap. This little gem came from Mr. Hart of Hart's Wine Cellars in western NY. Mr. Hart is an extremely knowledgeable (and quite skilled) winemaker who specializes in making wine from hybrid and vinifera grapes grown in western NY. I feel privileged to be the recipient of two of his wines and wanted to share my tasting report on his 2006 Dry White.

Hart's Wine Cellars 2006 Dry White

Specs: 40% vidal, 35% vignoles, 25% cayuga

Appearance: Clear, light straw yellow, good legs!

Aroma: Light and fruity with a bright acidic finish. Citrus and floral aromas dominate with the aromas of vignoles shining through.

Taste: Smooth, light fruit foretaste. Good mid-pallette body (there's the vidal standing up) and a slightly buttery finish.

All in all a very nice wine from a talented wine maker. The blend of grapes was very nice and balanced and produced a wine that was perfect for summer sipping.

Santa Claus came early this year from Paradoxx Winery

I'm fortunate to be a member of the on-line home winemaking forum Winepress.US. Last December, a great tradition of Secret Santa wine swapping was started. I wasn't able to participate because I was in the midst of moving and unpacking, but I jumped at the chance when the suggestion was made to repeat the swap in July as an Early Secret Santa. All participants are put through a highly specialized and technical system to match swapping partners (OK, we draw names out of a hat!), and then we send 1-2 wines to each of our partners.

I recently received a package from KC from Texas, proprietor of Paradoxx Winery, and decided to try a bottle of Russo Fortissimo (Bin #807) tonight. Folks, this is a very good wine. Deep and dark in color, the nose begins with dark cherry and vanilla and ends with a hint of oak and leather. A well integrated taste profile of fruit and mild tannins. A very good drinking wine. I wish I had a big old italian sausage pizza to go with it! Great, now my mouth is watering...

Thank you for sharing, KC!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Chilean Syrah

I've alluded to also getting Chilean Syrah grapes this spring, but have been too busy to actually describe the fermentation! Will have to recap in 1 post.

Grapes were picked-up from M&M Produce on May 31 and crushed within 3 hours of pick-up while still cool. I was a little disappointed that these grapes actually had moldy clusters in just about crate. Not as bad as I've seen before, and I probably shouldn't complain too much given that they were picked on April 16 and have traveled about 3000 miles!

Sugar levels were pretty good (Brix = 23.8), but acid levels were a tad low (pH = 3.67 and TA = 4.8 mg/mL). I'm going to wait to adjust until after fermentation is over.

I innoculated with RC-212 yeast about 6 hours after crush and fermentation had started by the next morning. The syrah fermented slower than the malbec and had only fallen to Brix = 1.1 by Friday, June 6. My darling wife had a triathalon race in New Hampshire that weekend and I was strongly urged to attend to maintain marital harmony. I took Friday morning off from work and pressed must and let the fermentation continue in carboys under an airlock. This should give a smoother, more fruity wine that will be ready to drink earlier. I got 3 6-gal and 1 3-gal carboys and a 1-gal jug full of wine. By Sunday afternoon, when we returned, it still wasn't done (Brix = -1.3). I didn't have time to rack on Monday night, so I finally was able to rack off the gross lees on Tuesday, 6/10. I ended up with 4 5-gal carboys, and 3/4-gal amongt some smaller jugs. I innoculated with Lalvin VP-41 ML bacteria and MLF has noisely commenced within 24 hrs. I'm a little concerned because I think I detect a bit of H2S aroma. Can't do much about it at this point. I'm off the gross lees and MLF is in progress. Hopefully, that will blow off most of the H2S and I can splash rack to my heart's content to get rid of any residual.

The past couple of days have been HOT in Boston! I've discovered that my garage is wonderfully insulated and only reached >80 °F after 2 days of 90+ °F temperatures. After racking of the gross lees, I brought both the syrah and the malbec inside (76 °F A/C!) and have them lined up in the spare bathroom. I'll have to post a picture because it's rather hilarious to see a bathroom FULL of wine!.

Salute,
a Wine Student

Chilean Malbec In Carboy and MLF!

I did end up pressing the malbec on Sunday, 6/1. One of the Brutes had fermented dry by Friday night, so I covered with Saran Wrap and got an extra day of extended maceration while I was waiting for free time. Very easy pressing once I got going. Having sat unused for 18 months and moved from Michigan to Massachusetts, my press required a bit of scrubbing to get the cobwebs off. I ended up filling 3 6-gal and 1 5-gal carboys, as well as a 750-ml and 375-ml bottles, which sat for 24 hrs to settle the gross lees. I then racked off the gross lees into 3 6-gal carboys, 2 1-gal jugs, a 1/2-gal jug, and a 375-mL bottle. I hydrated a packet of Enoferm-beta malo-lactic bacteria and dispensed amongst the 'boys to initiate malo-lactic fermentation. And that's pretty much were things sit. The ML fermentation is going strongly, although my chromatography test still shows significant malic acid present after 1 week.

Why the ML fermentation, you ask? Well, this is commonly done on red wines to help soften the acid profile and give a little more roundness. Lactic acid has a low pKa than malic acid, so it reduces the acidic taste. Lactic acid is perhaps most famous for giving that round, buttery taste to California chardonnay, but it does the same thing in red wines. If you don't purposefully initiate MLF, you run the risk of having it start on its own by naturally occurring ML bacteria after you've bottled it. That can lead to exploding bottles due to the CO2 released, and the native ML bacterial strain may give off-flavors that you don't like.

Salute,
a Wine Student

Prior Chilean Malbec 2008 posts:
Chilean Malbec Grape Crush
Malbec Fermentation Has Commenced!
Malbec Mid-fermentation Update

Malbec Mid-Fermentation Update

Seems like just a few days ago that I had added the yeast culture starter to the malbec fermenters and was anxiously awaiting the first signs of fermentation--oh, wait a moment, it was! The yeast took about 18 hrs to get going, and they haven't looked back since! Each fermenter has warmed up to about 76 °F just from the fermentation activity. The rise in temperature is good for color extraction and setting. I honestly was hoping for a little higher temperature, but that's the best I could do without external heating. After only 3 days of fermentation, the Brix sugar levels have dropped by more than half. I'm hoping to pick up my syrah grape order this weekend, but I think I will also be pressing the malbec wine off the skins on Saturday or Sunday if this fermentation rate keeps up. So far, I'm very pleased with the result. Very, very dark color--looks like ink when I'm punching down the cap. And no sign of H2S formation thus far.

Salute,
a Wine Student.

Prior Chilean Malbec 2008 posts:
Chilean Malbec Grape Crush
Malbec Fermentation Has Commenced!

Malbec Fermentation has commenced!

Just a quick note--malbec fermentation has commenced in good form! Woke up this morning to find a very thick cap of grape skins that had been pushed up by the CO2 gas produced during the yeast fermentation. Gave each fermenter a good punch down and checked for sugar levels (Brix = 21-21.8) and temperature (66.7-68 °F). Juice looks incredibly dark!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Prior Chilean Malbec 2008 posts:
Chilean Malbec Grape Crush

Chilean Malbec is here!

Memorial Day weekend has turned out to be far more exciting that I would have thought! My Chilean grape order from M&M Produce finally arrived--or at least the malbec part of it! Silly me wanted to make a syrah (because I love a big, rich syrah). However, due to weather conditions in the Curico Valley this year, the syrah harvest was delayed past the 2nd week in May ETA. The very nice folks at M&M try to combine a person's order into one shipment so you wouldn't have to make multiple trips. Last week, I got the notification that the malbec grapes would be here on Tuesday, May 20, but the syrah was still delayed until May 27. I decided to screw the gas prices and go get the malbec and at least get that fermentation going.

I took Friday, May 23 off from work and drove down the Hartford, CT and finally located M&M Produce. Having never been there, I didn't know what to expect, so I was a little surprised to find that M&M is located in the Regional Produce Market alongside several other produce wholesalers (wonder if they'd help me obtain some Montmorency cherries?). Very nice folks--they quickly loaded me up with 270 lbs of malbec grapes and sent me on my way. The trip back was uneventful besides some brief rain showers a few miles from home that made me glad I had bundled my 15 cases of grapes under a tarp.

I had brought everything I needed up into the garage the night before so all I had to do was to give Vinia (my crusher/destemmer) a good cleaning and sanitize my other equipment before I started crushing grapes. The grapes were actually picked on April 2, but they looked to be in pristine condition with very few leaves. Tasted like plum jam, with greenish-brown seeds. They had been packed with a pad of sodium metabisulfite packets on top of the grapes. You can see my crusher/destemmer setup in the picture. The grapes fall into the Tupperware bins underneath, while the stems fall out into the bin at the rear. I quickly found that lifting a bin of 36 lbs of crushed grape must was about all I could handle without making a mess as I poured into my Brute trashcans that I use as fermenters. I also found that I couldn't simply lift the crate and dump in the grapes because the tissue paper that they were wrapped in would fall into the auger in the receiving bin and go through the crusher! I ended up scooping up handfuls of grapes and tossing them in. One other discovery--I had to elevate the must receiving bins to right underneath the crusher. Otherwise, the must would get sprayed all over place!

Took me about 2.5 hours to get everything crushed. I ended up splitting the must between two Brute fermenters (8 cases in one, 7 cases in the other) to allow for expansion of the must during fermentation. Sugar levels of the must was decent (Brix = 22- 22.5, PA = 12-12.5%). I treated each fermenter with Lallzyme EX, Opti-Red, and pectic enzyme to aid in color & juice extraction. I opted not to add sulfites to suppress wild yeast growth at this point and instead added 4 gallon jugs of ice to do a 12 hr cold-soak. The biggest pain of the whole operation was the clean-up!

The next morning on Saturday I removed the ice jugs and did my pH and acid tests. The pH was a little high (3.56) and total acid was a little low (4.5 mg/mL) so I added tartaric acid to raise the pH = 3.30-3.49 and TA = 5.9-6.6 mg/mL (the range is for the two Brutes and will be averaged out when everything is blended together). I made some yeast starters with RC-212 yeast and added to the Brutes after a couple hours of vigorous starter growth.

Sunday update--beginning to see some signs of yeast activity. The must was a little cool when I added the yeast and the garage didn't get much over 60 °F on Saturday. It's much warmer out today and I left the garage door open to get things warmed up a bit.

Looking good so far...
a Wine Student