All of the barrels that we brought to the blasting were in good shape. Some people were not so lucky — actually, they were sold some bad used barrels and didn’t find out until they opened ’em up. Here’s a barrel with a bad case of mold. Compare this to the picture of the healthy barrel below.
This is the inside of one of our barrels a few minutes after being blasted with dry ice. I think this is a 2005 American oak.
We had one of barrels blasted last year and ended up winning a bunch of awards with the wine we made in it. So, this year we decided to have 6 more blasted. The process involves removing the head from the barrel, scraping the inside to get rid of blisters, and then putting it on this machine where dry ice is shot at it while it rotates.
Here’s the frozen inside of the barrel right after the blasting.
We collected all of our barrels together in one place this week in order to clean them up and get ready for crush. Here’s the ‘before’ picture. I’ll post an ‘after’ picture in a few days!
The Phoenix Landing won a Gold Medal in the Generic Red Category at the California State Fair. Not bad! We also won a Silver in Bordeaux Blend and Bronze in Cabernet Sauvignon. Apparently, there’s a medal-winner ceremony that I get to go to where they’ll present awards!
Margaret and I are going to be volunteering at the Home Winemaking booth at the State Fair too. We love the State Fair, and this is going to be a great way to get in free and get to talk about winemaking!
Since my last post, there has been a ton of exciting wine news:
* We bottled the 2007 Bad Astronauts Phoenix Landing Cabernet Sauvignon / Cab Franc
* This wine won a Double Gold and Best Red of Show at the El Dorado County Fair!!!
* It also won a silver at the Sacramento Home Winemakers Jubilee
* and another silver in Placer County
If you were involved with the making of this wine at all (or if you were reading my posts back in the fall), you know that a lot of work went into this. I’m extremely proud of the success the Bad Astronauts have had with this wine, and I’m excited about starting it all over in the fall (hopefully with fewer problems to conquer!).
I pulled a sample from each of the two kegs today and brought it home for testing. The wine in both was pretty clear, but one is noticeably darker than the other as a result of the miracle we performed after the last racking.
Here are the results of the tests:
Keg 1 (the darker one): pH 3.43, 50ppm free SO2
Keg 2 (the lighter one): pH 3.40, 50ppm free SO2
These numbers are good.
Both taste about the same, although the lighter colored one tastes a bit thinner…which might be good, because both still have a very abrasive grapefruit finish. The sugar we add before bottling and 4-6 months of bottle aging mellowed it out last year, and I’m sure it will be the same this time. There’s nothing “wrong” with the wine right now, and so I’m happy!
One thing I’m going to experiment with this weekend is trying to smooth out the bitterness and clarify the wine by fining it with skim milk or egg whites. Here’s a short article about how this works.
At this point, I’m thinking we’re going to bottle in April or early May
Jeff, Margaret, and I bottled the 2007 French Colombard on Saturday. Sam came by and cheered us on too. This is the white that Margaret and I bought as grape juice from Delicato Winery back in the fall. We had 17 gallons, which ended up being 6.5 cases of wine (78 bottles). And, it’s really good.
It’s unfiltered, but very clear due to the cold weather we’ve been having, which causes the wine to clarify naturally. If you put it next to a white wine that’s been filtered, you’ll see that it’s hazier, but you’ll still be amazed at how pretty this wine is.
Sunday, we took a bottle down to John Carvalho at Carvalho Family Winery in Clarksburg. He was impressed with it, and said it has a nice nose, good acidity, apple and melon flavors, and that the mid-palate was surprisingly and pleasantly smooth.
Later on that evening, we took a bottle to Revolution Winery and had the winemaker there, Jason Fernandez, try it. He also had very nice things to say about it. Since this was my first non-fruit white wine, I was extremely thrilled to be getting such a glowing review.
