Author: Chris

Barbera – the story

Sam and I drove to Drytown Cellars (near plymouth, in Amador county) today to pick up the club project red wine (Barbera). We got there at about 12:20, and there was mass confusion. We somehow got our 250 lbs into the truck, paid, and got out of there…I’m still not real sure what was going on. We added 50 ppm SO2 before leaving.

When we measured the sugar at the winery, it was 26 Brix. We stopped at American Ice Company on Del Paso on the way back and bought 30 lbs of dry ice. We through 10 lbs into the macrobin. We left the other 20 lbs (2 10lb blocks) in the cooler and drove back to the winery.

I should have taken a picture of the dry ice in the must. It looked very cool with all the smoking. We bailed the smoking must and dry ice into a primary fermenter and wheeled it back to the winery.

The temperature of the must was about 75 degrees when we got back (around 2:30), and it dropped to about 65 degrees by 4:00.

I tested the must and got these numbers:

26.8 Brix
.7 TA (not real sure about this)
pH 3.31

We stirred it up a little and then put a lid on it. The goal with this must is to keep it cold and prevent fermentation for 24-48 hours in order to extract more color from the skins.

UPDATE: We took some of the must to Revolution Wines and had them test with their (far superior) equipment. Here are they numbers they got:

pH 3.23
TA 1.095

Chenin Blanc – the story to date

We picked the Chenin Blank in Clarksburg yesterday. Here’s how it all went down.

We drove down there with Maya and Sam’s gang. The son of the vineyard owner (Steve) showed us where the vines were that we could pick. The field had been mechanically picked the morning before, and we were allowed to come in and pick the ends of the rows for free. The grapes were right next to Bogle’s Chardonnay vines.

We took a field test of a few grapes and decided the sugar was at 23 brix. We got to work at about 10ish, and we had picked somewhere around 750-900 lbs by noon.

When we got back to the winery, we set up the crusher/destemmer and the press next to each other and set up a production line. One person (me) stood in the truck and bailed out grapes. The next person (Kathy) brought the grapes back to the crusher. The rest of the folks took turns crushing, dumping into the press, pressing, and dumping into the primary fermenter.

When we were done, we had about 56 gallons of must. I ran some tests and got the following results:

22 Brix
TA .95%
pH 3.31

I took 6 gallons and Ian took 5 gallons. Sam and Jim split the rest between 2 primary fermenters.

I added about 75ppm SO2 to my carboy and then put it on ice in the winery at 3:00. At 3:30, the temperature of the must was 75 degrees. At 7:00 it was 56 degrees.

This morning (8:00), the Chenin Blanc was at 60 degrees and I added more ice to the tub it’s in. At 5:00, it was 64 degrees.

At 7:00, I pulled the carboy out of the tub and saw that there was about 2 inches of sediment on the bottom. I decided to rack it.

I added 3tsp pectic enzyme and 5.3 grams Fermaid K to a smaller carboy (5 gallons) and racked.

Then, I rehydrated the yeast (EC1118) and added it.

UPDATE: here are the numbers we got when Revolution tested it with their equipment:

pH 3.28
TA .84