Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Havest week Oct. 22-28, Almost done!

Tuesday, we barreled all of the Trenton Station Syrah. This took up about 30 barrels! Wednesday, we started our last press for Stage Gulch Syrah. We had 13 bins and usually we do about 3-4 bins into the press before we run it. Today we pushed it and loaded in 5 bins for 1 press so we could do it all in only 3 stages instead of 4. It all fit and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We were eating lunch when the press was running so we could keep an eye on it. All went well. The press finished and we emptied out the dried skins and stems and got set up to do the 2nd out of 3 presses. I started to hear this beeping noise like an alarm clock. We looked around to see what it was and it was coming from the forklift. It was an error message saying BRUSHES. We shut it on and off and it was still beeping. Randy called the service station and they said we had to stop using it immediately or we would cause permanent damage. They thought they could get a service representative out either today or tomorrow. We were so close to being done! We waited for a bit to see if the service person would be there in a timely manner and fix the forklift so we could continue, but he arrived at 2pm and fixed the forklift until about 4pm. Needless to say, we had to clean up and continue the next day to finish the press. Next week, we just need to barrel the Stage Gulch and it will be all quiet in the winery. The babies will be in their barrels!

Monday, October 22, 2007

Harvest week Oct 15- 21, 2007

Earlier this week, we prepared for the "Uniqueness of Syrah" Seminar. This involved shopping at K&L wine shop in SF to find wines that we wanted to be represented in the presentation. We bought a Syrah from Northern Rhone, Southern Australia, Chile, and Lodi region. Then, the research began...we had to sample all of these wines, along with our 2 Syrahs and take tasting notes. The event was on Saturday from 3-5pm and 32 people attended. It was a hit! On Thursday night, Jack and I poured at the Taste event sponsered by East Bay Express at the Swarm gallery in Oakland. It was a nice event. Check out this weeks copy of the East Bay Express, there is an insert that has the local wineries (Dashe, JC, Periscope and Rosenblum) map along with a bottle shot.

On Friday we pressed the first Syrah, the Alegria vineyard, and barreled Widdoes, the last Pinot Noir. Sunday, we were back in the cellar putting in a full day of pressing Trenton Station, which was 12 tons, and barreling the Alegria. The Syrah grapes seemed to be juicier this year, because we calculated how much juice we thought we would have from the press and we seemed to have more. When we checked the back tank, we were right to the rim!!!! We monitored closer for filling the next tank! Randy and I were trying to move a hose to the other tank with the use of the pump and we failed to shut off the valve so we both got lots of wine if the face. Oh, the joys of winemaking...guess we got our yearly wine shower!! We are just one press and 2 barrelings away from being done.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Harvest week Oct. 8 - 14, The grapes are all in!!!!

Monday, we pressed the Saralee 115 Pinot Noir. The previous week, we got a call from Peter, our grape broker for Stage Gulch, he thought the grapes would be ready sometime this weekend. However, with the forecast of rain for Tuesday there was a scramble to get the grapes picked. The grapes were picked Tuesday morning and were delivered to us on Wednesday afternoon, 9.94 tons. This was such a good thing, since it rained Tuesday night and again on Friday!!!
We lined up several volunteers to help out with the sorting and destemming. The whole process seemed to take a long time, but I think it was just because we were tired from all of the other crushes. We are truly happy to have all of our grapes in.
The Stage Gulch grapes will cold soak for 2 days and then we will inoculate them with yeast. In this time that they are fermenting, about 2 weeks, we do 3 manual punch downs a day, everyday! The yeast are converting sugar to alcohol and give off carbon dioxide which pushes the skins to the top of the bin. We want the skins to be in contact with the juice for maximum color and flavor extraction. So, when we do the punch down we are pushing the skins back into the juice. Check back in next week for more barreling and pressing!

Monday, October 8, 2007

Harvest week, October 1- 7, 2007

It is Syrah time!!! Syrah grapes have thicker skins than Pinot Noir and the clusters aren't so tight together. These are the Alegria grapes.


This week we barreled the Morelli Lane Pinot Noir and pressed the UCD 18 Las Brisas Pinot Noir on Wednesday. Thursday, Jack and Randy rented a truck to drive up to RRV to get the Alegria Syrah grapes. Martha and I stayed behind to clean and set up all of the equipment so we would be ready to go when they returned with the grapes. However, things did not go that smoothly....Randy and Jack got stuck in traffic and didn't arrive at the Alegria vineyard until 10:30am, then they had to wait for the pickers to pick 5 tons of Syrah grapes. They got back on the road around 2:30pm and ended up at the winery at 4pm (we had projected they would arrive at Lost Canyon Winery at 1pm!!!). This crush took way longer because the grapes were picked in 1 ton bins and we had to dump them into 1/2 ton bins to fit on the sorting machine. We acted quickly because we had to maximize our use of daylight hours. The grapes came in at 27brix. Most volunteers bailed due to the lateness of the grapes. However, Mike Hardie came to the rescue and a new volunteer showed up too, along with Jack's son in law!!! It was a long night and their help was very appreciated. After everything was all cleaned up it was 9:30pm!

Saturday, we had our biggest crush, 12 tons! We had 5 volunteers come in to help us with Trenton Station Syrah. These grapes looked great, and were at 25 brix. The crushing process was done in record time, 11am-2:30pm we crushed 12 tons. I thought we would be going until 5pm. The sorting crew was awesome! Thanks, volunteers!!

Also, took some photos from the point of view at the top of the crusher. Enjoy! Only one more vineyard to go.....Stage Gulch coming next week.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Harvest week Sept 24- Oct 1, 2007 All the Pinot Noir is in!



The Viognier has taken off with it's fermentation, so a task we have to deal with is keeping it cold while it is fermenting. Normally during this period the temperatures creeps up to 90-95 F, but we want to keep it at 60F or so. This ensures those beautiful aromatics that Viognier is known for having. Since we are not really equipped to make white wine, we have to keep the tanks cold by our own devices. I was at Pagano's in Alameda and I saw these large over the door hanging hamper bags and thought we could hang them on the outside of the tanks and keep filling them with ice. Then, Jack thought we should use some insulated foam to wrap it up and keep the cold in. It is working pretty good, but they look like debutantes with formal gowns on. What do you think?












We started the week off with pressing Saralee's Pinot Noir 777 clone along with Las Brisas Pinot Noir Swan clone. We loaded 3 bins into the press each time and ran the 20 minute program with no glitches. We let the wines rest in the tanks until Thursday and then we put the wines into the appropriate barrels (50% new and 50% old and we match the particular barrels with the wines).
Saturday, we had our last bit of Pinot Noir come in from the Widdoes Vineyard. We gathered a couple volunteers to help out with our expected 7tons, but only 2.5 tons came!!! With all of the help, we were done in no time! Thanks volunteers for helping us sort through the grapes. They came in cold, looked beautiful and tasted great. The sugar was an average of 26 brix.
Sunday, we were back at it, pressing Morelli Lane Pinot Noir. Now, it will stay in the tanks for several days. We will barrel it this week and wait to hear from the growers about how our Syrah grapes are coming along. And so it goes on.....