So begins year 11!

I had some scheduling constraints this fall, and wanted to try a different vineyard. Fortunately, it seems the market is pretty depressed, and pricing is low. Good for me! I found some listings online and found Bordes Winery was selling Pinor Noir in Sonoma for 80¢ a pound. It turns out this vineyard is very very close to Roche, where we had our wedding afterparty. The wine there was very good! And this is in Sonoma. Suffice to say, I have higher hopes for this wine than all previous ones.

I went to pick up the grapes on Tuesday September 23 at 7am. My contact there had the bin loaded and ready for me to pick up. My dad met me there, and I was able to transfer 1000# into bins in about an hour. (My dad had a bum hand, so didn’t help too much). I took the grapes home and put them in my driveway and got the boys to school without being too late.  It turns out 1000lbs fits pretty well in 12 big bins, 3 half bins and 2 buckets.  They settled as I drove home so they appeared to be 85% full when I got home, so I could have stuffed them a little more.  I could easily fit 7 bigs in my trunk on the bottom level, 3 of the half guys easily on top, two big ones in my passenger seat, I could probably fit the buckets in a footwell somewhere.  I put 1 on a second level in my trunk.  This leaves 2 remaining.  I could maybe fit them both on the second level (meaning 3 halfs and 3 fulls on the second level), but that would be stretching it.  Fortunately my dad carried home a couple bins to make it easier.  I’ve never carried a full 1000# in my car.

We then crushed and destemmed the grapes.  This is getting fairly easy. It took about an hour plus an hour of cleanup.

The end result:

Later, I had my assistant help me dosing the SO2 in the tubs.  I added 1.5tsp per bin.

Schedule:

Brix: 24.2

Day 1 – September 23 – picked up grapes, crushed/destemmed dosed with SO2

Day 3 – September 25 – pitched yeast, so at 48+ hour mark after crush (this might have been a mistake, why did I wait until this day?)

Day 4 – September 26 – began punching the cap, no active fermentation.

Day 8 – September 30 – added Fermaid yeast nutrients

Day 11 – October 3 – added malolactic bacteria

Day 13 – October 5 – pressed wine, got to around -2 Brix

This year, I used a bladder press that I rented (more expensive).  The gist of it is that it’s the same basket as previous, but there’s a bladder you connect to your hose and fill up with water. It was fairly intuitive to use after watching a quick youtube video.  It is 90L and roughly the same size as previous basket press rentals.  We did the same 3 runs of it, and took roughly the same amount of time and work.  It did spill a lot of water around our work area which I suppose wasn’t that bad (it did clean the spilled must).  It was also a little harder to load due to the big bladder in the middle.  It took maybe 1 hour of processing and 1 hour of cleaning.  The cleaning was slightly easier since fewer parts.  It yielded 5 full kegs (actually less 1g that I had to steal from previous Merlot vintage to top off keg).  I expected 4 kegs and 1 5g carboy, so an extra 10 gallons.  So that was either due to the new press type or just juicier grapes.  I got all 5 kegs in the garage and under airlocks and they will settle for the next couple weeks before first racking.