Sparkling Concord is sparkling!

At our last stop in the continuing sage of the sparkling concord wine that I've mentioned before here and here, I had primed the dry base wine with additional sugar and yeast and set it aside to "sparkle" champenois style (in the bottle). After a couple of months in the cellar, I moved the bottles upstairs to my guest bedroom closet where they would be a little warmer. I've been wanting to check to see if the secondary fermentation had a) occurred and b) was complete. During one of my wine tasting group's meetings this past week, the crowd started to demand a taste of some of my "in progress" wines. Fortunately, I had a bottle of the concord in the refrigerator in preparation of testing later in the week. I rather nervously brought it out and popped the crown cap.....

A little wisp of vapor, and then a surge of bubbles! Yay! Fermentation in the bottle had occurred! The wine is definitely a work in progress because although it was dry, it was one tart-tasting wine. It will definitely need to be sweetened and served as a "demi-sec" or "sec" sparkling wine.

So...next step is to riddle the bottle to get the lees into the neck of the bottle so they can be disgorged. I don't have an official riddling board, so going to try this a cheap way. I've set the bottles on their heads in wine boxes and will rotate them every other day or so to dislodge the sediments. So far it seems to be working just fine.

Stay tuned for the next chapter in our sparkling concord saga!

Cheers,
Noel

Vermont Maple Ice is in the bottle!

Faithful readers will recall that I had an idea for an "icewine"-style dessert wine made from Maple Syrup. Version 1 was started earlier this year and I finally got around to filtering and bottling so I could send a sample into the Winemaker Magazine competition. Of course, when you are done bottling, there's always a little left over in the filter, the tubing, and that not-quite-so-full bottle so that I could sit down after clean-up and enjoy the fruits of my labor. Gee shucks, such a tough hobby...

Vermont Maple "Ice"

Stats: 11.5% ABV, RS = 293 g/L, pH = 2.97, TA = 8.6 g/L

Appearance: Crystal clear, light golden brown, nice strong legs

Aroma: Maple syrup with some nutty & citrus notes

Taste: Bold maple syrup taste with a nice sweet finish that has some interesting pecan/walnut flavors and a citric kick. Thick body. Maple syrup on steroids. Yummm....

Overall Impression: I'm usually not a sweet wine fan, but this is pretty good stuff! Quite pleased with how this turned out. It's sweet, but smooth enough that the sweetness just kind of rolls off your tongue. I'm picturing this poured over some vanilla ice cream at night or even pancakes in the morning.

Cheers,
Noel

The Reserve Line is born....

Bitterly cold temperatures conspired to keep me indoors on this Martin Luther King holiday so after a morning of errands and house/desk work, I turned to measuring the free SO2 levels in the 2010 Chilean Sauvignon Blanc. This wine has been slowly and quietly getting ready to bottle in the background. I haven't blogged too much about it amidst all the over posts this past year. The last post had to do with stabilizing and preventing further MLF. After the lysozyme addition, it's been sitting in carboys during the fall 2010 harvest. I did a bentonite fining in November for protein stabilization and I finally got around to filtering in December after a few good weeks of cold stabilization. I intended to filter all 3 carboys with a 0.5 micron filter to remove as many residual yeast & bacteria cells, but only managed to filter the free run carboy before the filter media gummed up. The last 2 carboys got a 1 micron filter with the intention of passing through a 0.5 micron filter while bottling.

Now that's all been done, I really need to bottle so I can enter it in the Winemaker Magazine competition in March. That's been the goal, but I've been waffling a bit about entering it because I haven't been too overwhelmed by the aroma of the wine, which has been pretty muted. The classic grassy & grapefruit aromas are there, just not real strong. And without that nose, it's been tasting kind of boring. OK tasting, just not much "WOW" factor.

So what does a winemaker do when they produce a wine that's not quite as desirable as they'd like and there isn't much they can add or adjust to affect the aroma? They blend!

What this wine really needs is more aroma, so I went looking for a blending wine that would add some aroma punch. I settled on some 2009 Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand because:

a) NZ sauv blancs are known for their powerful aromas of grapefruit & grass,
b) Oyster Bay helped defined the NZ sauv blanc reputation and aroma profile, and
c) it was on sale at my local liquor store.

I bought enough to treat the free run carboy only because I really didn't want to spend as much on the blending wine as on the grapes originally. After some bench trials, I settled on a roughly 10% addition that would give an improved aroma profile. I made the blend right after Christmas, so I was eager to see how it was doing.

A long story short on the SO2 testing, but free SO2 levels look perfectly fine for bottling. AND, the aromas of the free run carboy are simply amazing. Big grapefruit & grassy nose with a nice crisp & tingling finish. And with that, the Aaronap Cellars Reserve line is born--this carboy is simply so much nicer than the other 2 that I cannot in good conscience blend it with the others.

I'll bottle the Sauv blanc sometime this week and then start working on the labels. Methinks a Reserve label should have some gold in it somehow. We'll see how creative I can get. Anyone know the labeling percentage guidelines to still be able to call a Chilean wine a Chilean wine? CA requires 85% of the grapes to be sourced from a particular appellation to label the wine as originating in that appellation. If applicable to Chile, that would mean I could still call this a "Chile Curico Valley" wine. Otherwise, I'm stuck with a "Southern Hemisphere" Reserve.

Maybe this will just be the "South Side of The Globe" Sauvignon Blance Reserve 2010....

Cheers,
Noel

Almost Everything Racked for Winter

Well folks, it's been awhile since I've posted. My apologies--life just gets in the way at inconvenient times. The winemaking has kind of ground to a halt with the onset of winter. Grapes came in late this year and cold weather arrived early, so primary fermentation took awhile and now my basement is simply too cold for productive malolactic fermentation. The one wine that did strongly initiate was the zinfandel. It's been bubbling slowly the last several weeks, but really started to slow down as the basement temps kept dropping.

I'm not all that concerned about slow MLF during the winter as the basement is going to be too cold for much of anything else to grow. I've got several options--1) wait for spring and let the bacteria restart on their own (the easiest thing to do), 2) buy some heat pads to wrap around the tanks to warm them up, and 3) at least move the carboys upstairs.

In order to do any of those, I really need to get the wine off the gross lees. I've been slowly racking things off the gross lees and getting them ready for winter. The cabernet franc that was in my 150 L tank got racked to a 15 gal demijohn, a 5 gal carboy, and some assorted half-gallon jugs and bottles. The lemberger that was in carboys got racked back into the 150L tank (after cleaning of course). The zinfandel carboys got moved upstairs into the warm spare bedroom, where the bacteria really sprang back into life. I'm planning on racking that off the gross lees on Wednesday after the housekeeper has come.

Today was the day to rack the merlot into a new tank. Turned out that I really did a crappy job of cleaning the empty tank after it had held the petite sirah. Man, was that thing filthy. Fortunately, a little PBW and elbow grease took care of that. I pulled out my pump, got everything sanitized & rinsed, and started to pump the merlot into the fresh tank.

I'm not too happy with the performance of the pump.

Had a lot of cavitation in the output hose that mixed a lot of air into the wine. Got even worse as the pre-filter got clogged with solids, which happened just before I almost got completely done. Had to disassemble the filter, resanitize it, and try again. Got at least another gallon through before giving up. After tasting it, I think a little microoxidation could be a good thing as it's pretty tannic, but still I don't like that I was beating the wine up that much. I need a new & better, more gentle pump.... Santa, can you hear me?

So almost everything is ready to sit over the winter. I still need to rack the zinfandel off the gross lees and let the MLF finish. That's a job for this week or maybe Christmas Eve. I also brought the carboy of cab franc upstairs and the bacteria in that sprang into action. Perhaps I'll shuttle tank wine into carboys and bring them upstairs for MLF completion over the winter. It's a good thing that my spare bedroom is empty!

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Press Recap

And finally....

After about 10 days, the musts were ready to press. I had added malolactic bacteria when the brix reached about 1.5-2 to try to take advantage of the residual warmth to help the bacteria get established and growing.

Took Friday, 11/5 off of work after a rather tumoltuous week of nearly losing my job during a surprise round of layoffs. After that scare and utter depression at losing both of my direct reports, I really needed a day to dive into wine and get my mind back into shape.

I don't know about my mind, but my body apparently wasn't quite up to the challenge.

It was a bit of work to press off the wine from the grapeskins and then transfer the buckets of wine down to the basement to pour into the stainless steel tanks. I really need to get a better system for this transfer instead of getting that much oxygen exposure. Future plans...

Here's the basic story in pictures for the cab franc:



Not quite sure how much merlot wine I ended up with--probably at least 40 g. Got a good 24 gallons of cabernet franc and 27 gallons of lemberger. Similar yield (~26 gallons) for the zinfandel. But the stuff has to sit there for a couple of days so I can rack off the gross lees, so I'll lose 1-2 gallons based on how fluffy the lees layer is.

My arms and back gave out around midnight when I was lugging the last few carboys down to the basement (merlot and cab franc in SS tanks, the zin and lemberger are in carboys). Guess all that weight lifting I had been doing in the preceding weeks only went so far! I was incredibly sore for about 3 days after that!

That's where things are sitting at the moment. Will rack off the gross lees this upcoming weekend, but this is where the wine will be for the winter. It's a little too cold for malolactic fermentation to really go strongly and it's just going to get colder. Fortunately, when the cellar is about 40 °F, I don't have to worry about bad microbes infecting the wine while I don't have it treated with sulfite. Things will be pretty much good until spring.

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Fermentation Recap

It's recap time tonight, so let's continue with the fermentation. When last we left, everything was crushed and chillin' overnight. On Tuesday night, I came home and got serious about must analysis and yeast innoculation. Numbers weren't all that bad

Merlot: brix = 21.0, PA = 11.6%, pH = 3.50, total acidity = 7.5 g/L
Cabernet franc: brix = 22.2, PA = 12.2%, pH = 3.42, total acidity = 7.1 g/L
Lemberger: brix = 21.6, PA = 11.9%, pH = 3.22, total acidity = 8.6 g/L
Zinfandel: brix = 28, PA = 15.4%, PA = 3.75, total acidity = 6.4 g/L

The WA grapes (merlot, cab franc, & lemberger) are a little lower brix & a little more acidic than I would have liked. On the other hand, the zin is a sugar powerhouse! I decided to leave the cab franc and the lemberger alone. The cab franc is in decent sugar space, while the lemberge is akin to a pinot noir so should be a little lower alcohol in my opinion. The merlot definitely needed some sugar, so I added sugar to reach brix = 23.0 (PA = 12.7%). The zinfandel definitely needs some amelioration to lower the sugar levels, so i added some acidulated water to lower the brix to about 25.6 (PA = 14%). That's a fancy way of saying that I added some tartaric acid to the water to make it about 6.5 g/L in total acidity so that we don't dilute the acid levels while fixing the sugar levels.

I'm going for a Right Bank Bordeaux blend with the merlot and cab franc so I chose to use Lalvin MT yeast strain that was isolated in Bordeaux and is supposed to emphasize the typical merlot flavors and aromas. I bought a big bag and used it for the merlot, cab franc, and lemberger (mainly because I had extra). For the zinfadel, I decided to use VQ-15 Rockpile yeast--a strain that was isolated from zinfandel fermentations in the dry Rockpile AVA. Since the zinfandel was dry-farmed in similar rocky conditions in the Sierra Foothills, I thought this yeast would be a good complement and really punch up those jammy zinfandel flavors.

After innoculation, the cooler temperatures kept things fairly slow. It took about 48 hrs before the skin cap started to form on the wines and after that it was a pretty slow, but steady fermentation. I added both DAP and Fermaid K after the lag phase and at 1/3 sugar depletion. Used a little extra than normal because the ferment was a bit stinky as a lot of darker thiol aromas were blown off during punch downs. The must temperatures never got above 65 °F or so due to the cold temps in my garage.

The merlot, cab franc, and lemberger finished fermentation after about 9 days, while the zinfandel was a little extra pokey. After 9 days, the zinfandel was still at brix = 6.4. But since I was getting all the gear out and cleaned, I decided to press everything on the same day and let the zinfandel finish in the carboy.

Next post please...

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Crush Recap

Every year, I swear that I'm going to document the fermentation step by step. And every year, that goal eludes me. This year is no different, friends. The 2010 West Coast harvest was delayed for several weeks due to cold weather that prevented the grapes from ripening. The weather finally warmed up in early October only to result in 1-2 weeks of >100°F temperatures that resulted in flash ripening and grape dehydration. I lost a chance at making some Suisan Valley carignan because the abrupt heat wave rendered the crop unharvestable--turns out this is probably not a bad thing for the sanity of the winemaker at Aaronap Cellars. It also turned out that my splitting the harvest between California and Washington was probably the best darn thing that I could have done as WA was cool, but didn't experience the intense heat wave in early October.

While the grapes were riding the temperature swings on the West Coast, I was busy staying on top of my viticulture class and trying to survive the pressure pot at work. Sad to say, but there were times when I felt like the grapes were adding to the stress instead of being my salvation. But the day finally arrived when I got the notice that my WA grapes were arriving--at the same time as the Amador County Zinfandel. Woo hoo! One trip to M&M! On Friday, Oct 25, I headed south to pick up the grapes. Really enjoyed that trip because I was the only one on the dock that morning and got to meet and chat with Frank Musto, the man behind M&M Winegrape. Really nice guy--very glad I finally had a chance to meet him.

It took awhile to load 1500 lbs of grapes and frozen must. The only hiccup in the whole order was that M&M had inadvertently mixed my lemberger grapes in with the extras that were being crushed and frozen. Although I had wanted to make a white lemberger, no biggee. More red wine and less crushing work. Not a bad trade off. But back to the grapes--yeah, you read right. 1500 lbs in total.

540 lbs of Two Mountains Winery merlot, Yakima Valley, WA
324 lbs of Two Mountains Winery cabernet franc, Yakima Valley, WA
324 lbs of Amador County zinfandel
400 lbs (or so) of Two Mountains Winery lemberger, Yakima Valley, WA (7 5 gal buckets of frozen must which was a little more than the 324 lbs that I had ordered).

I celebrated continuously on the ride home that I own a pick-up truck with a full length bed--this is the reason why. Makes up for all those other days of 15-18 mpg commutes and finding a parking space! Here's what the load looked like when I got home:

That's my winemaking Joanne who was there to pick up her merlot grape order and help me crush. I was very thankful for her help because crushing 1200 lbs of grapes is a LOT of work. With her help, we were able to finish in about 3.5 hrs. That let me get most of the cleaning done before midnight.

Here's a couple of shots of me happy as a clam... "A crushing we shall go, a crushing we shall go!"

The grapes were really in quite nice condition. A little extra MOG (material other than grapes) that I would have liked in the WA grapes, but still very nice small berries. The zinfandel was pretty well raisined, but that's too be expected from zinfandel and what gives it the dark jammy notes. My only complaint was that the WA grape crates often had some dirt stuck in the crannies that fell into the crusher every so often as I was dumping--little extra terroir flavor, I guess.

Now the late harvest meant that it had turned a little cool in Massachusetts by the end of October. Given it was about 10:00 PM by the time I wrapped up cleaning and started to think about must analysis, I decided to just let the must sit overnight. The grapes were still cold from the cold storage facility at M&M and the garage was not going to get over 50 °F that night. Not an official cold soak, but a cool rehydration. At this point, it was almost midnight, so I headed off to the shower and a warm bed.

Cheers,
Noel