Monday, September 28, 2009

El Dorado County Zin In

Our friends up in Fair Play once again offered up some of their Zinfandel for our home wine making efforts - yeay! We worked around an already packed weekend by having Mom deliver the must down in 5-gallon paint buckets (already treated with potassium metabisulfate), which we then transferred into our primary fermenter. Awesome!

Must was watered down to:
18 gallons must
Brix 23.4
Ph 3.5
Ta 9.3

To that we we added DAP & Leucofood (per last year's measurements), and this year threw Pectic Enzyme (5 teaspoons) into the mix for extra fruit / color extraction.

To our surprise, we returned 12 hours later to add yeast and found out the native yeast had already started fermenting the wine. Hmm, after some research and advice from our mentor that yeast doesn't make all that much of a difference, we decided to let it do its thing; will monitor fermentation closely to avoid a stuck fermentation by ensuring good temperature and nutrients for the yeast.

Now we punch down, this year more aggressively and will err on more punchdowns in a day.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Estate Cab almost ready to harvest

Got back from a busy weekend and did a spot-check of Brix only on the estate cab; measured 23-ish brix; so we're on target for harvest this weekend.

Only problem is the birds - STILL getting under the nets to munch on the grapes. So, a few times a week we stroll the vines and re-clothespin any holes that we see.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The birds think they're ready

Did our full sugar & acid measurement of the grapes this morning, and found that the birds are definitely getting in under the nets - many times tearing them open at the base to get in. Probably 10-15% eaten. Yikes! Sure enough, we're getting there but not quite ready to harvest:
* Brix 22.7
* pH 3.5
* TA 9.4
We gave them a good dose (7 hrs) of drip irrigation, knowing that this will probably be the last they get until harvest.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Sugar rising

Just back from a weekend away; the grapes are at 20-22 brix (depending on where in the vineyard) - average seems to be right around 20.5.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Water log

We've been getting a few more benchmarks from friends & neighbors about how much water they're actually giving their vines this time of year, and it sounds like we're on the low side. So we're watering 4 hrs weekly until harvest. Including today.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Sugar & Water Update

We used a refractometer to measure Brix this morning, so got to test row-by-row. Results ranged from 17.5 brix towards the top of the vineyard to 21 brix towards the bottom. Seems like the bulk of the grapes are at 19. Didn't bother with TA measurement this time, we'll do that again as we get closer to harvest.

Watered this morning - 4 hrs drip. Mostly because we've been reading more and more about watering grapes to keep them hanging and developing longer without raisining up. Sounds like the berries getting too much water and exploding is not so much of an issue where we live (California + hillside) -it's more a function of not wasting water.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Water log

4 hrs drip across ALL rows now that 4-6 are turned on again ;).