Tasting Notes

While racking the other day, Bruce and I snuck a bit out of each 'batch', to see how they are doing. Keep in mind we have no idea what we're tasting for, but you gotta start somewhere!

In age order:
2006 Cab Blend:
Hmm, tastes like wine . . . kinda acidic, guess we'll let it continue to age in big glass jug for awhile, maybe those tanins will resolve.

2007 Estate Cabernet:
OMG did we ferment lemon juice? The 2006 now tastes totally smooth. I think we'll try to precipitate some of that out with potassium carbonate.

2007 Blends (one roughly 50/50, the other 40/40 with about 20 '06):
Wow, they're not bad, pretty smooth and fruity tasting. Especially after that 2007 Estate!

2007 Leach Cabernet:
Did somebody sneak some real wine in here? It's actually really good! Hard to tell if the acid balance is a bit low, or is just right and we're still getting over the other batches. Let it age and we'll do the actual test next racking.

First Racking

Today we racked all of our '07 batches for the first time. "Racking" is a fancy way of saying transferring wine from one vessel to another, filtering out gunk you don't want.

You'll see that as the contents of the carboys settle, there's a gross layer at the bottom, called lees (spent yeast, grape particles, etc.) The first two images show the difference in amount of lees - the first shot is of the "free run" from Don's vineyard. The second sho is pressed-out wine from our vineyard. In either case, you need to get this sentiment out of the wine, so you very carefully move the jug full of wine (eg careful not to stir that gunk up), then siphon off wine from *above* that level of lees. So that's what we did!

Some notes:
-> 1st Carboy: Filled with "2007 Leach", which appears to have completed malo-lactic fermentation (MLF) during primary fermentation. In an ideal world we would have racked earlier, but instead we kept stirring the lees into the wine and opted to rack all batches at once. This one only had about 25 ppm of sulfite in it, so we added another 1/8t potassium metabisulfate ("meta") to the 6 gallon carboy while racking, which is roughly another 25 ppm.

-> 2nd & 3rd Carboys: roughly 50% 2007 Leach and 50% 2007 Estate. We blended the two because we really wanted our estate to go through MLF, but it either had too much alcohol or too high sulfite levels. By blending the two, the hope was that the MLF culture still alive in the 2007 Leach would transfer over to the other wine. It did! After about 5-7 days from blending, along with being kept at 70 degree temperature and stirring the lees about twice a week, we heard the snap, crackle, pop of MLF converting that malic acid into lactic acid. No meta added this time.

-> 4th carboy: 2007 Estate only. Because of the alcohol, acidity, and sulfite level we're pretty sure there's no hope of this one going through MLF. But because it's super acidic we want to try to reduce acid anyway, so we racked & added Potassium Carbonate at just over 1/2 teaspoon / 3 grams per gallon. We diluted the potassium carbonate in water before adding, and now the goal is to get that carboy as cold as possible, so the potassium carbonate will slowly precipitate through the wine, bind with extra acids, and end up as crystals in the bottom that you remove in next racking.

Now we keep that 4th carboy very cold (leaving it outside, hanging re-freezable cold packs over its shoulder to try to keep it colder than the air). The rest will sit in the cellar and age away.

Cutting back

Our vines have dropped almost all their leaves. Between now and next spring, we'll need to prune the vines such that we get fruit, and that fruit is easy to get at. Question is - when to prune?

Seems like the gist is this: you can prune at any time during dormancy, however your biggest enemy is springtime freezes - if you've pruned, and the shoots start growing, they run the risk of being frozen off if the temperatures dip too low. A good thing about being in NorCal is that while we have frost sometimes, an actual freeze is pretty rare. I do remember snow recently as late as March here (a rare occurence, but it *could* happen) - so we've opted to take D'Augustine Vineyard's recommendation with regards to pruning: basically, get rid of lots of the old vines now, before the rains, then actually prune before budbreak in March/April.

It's also apparently very important not to cut your vines in the rain, or within a day or two of rain, or in heavy fog. This is to reduce the chance of Eutypa. Apparently an effective, but non-EPA registered, preventative measure is to apply a diluted solution of Dreft, a laundry detergent for babies.

Row by row, I'll get these vines cleaned up. Sadly it looks like it might rain later today, so I stopped at one row and will plug away through the next month or two during the dry spells.