First Fruit Saturday Morning!

The first fruit from Bedrock Wine Co. comes in Saturday morning. The Pinot at Josh’s is sitting pretty right now. 24.9 brix as of today for the DRC clone and 24.2 for the Pommard-4. It looks like I will be getting a half ton of each, which I could not be happier about.

Josh and I have been texting each other like middle-schoolers for the last couple of days updating the brix and acid readings. The DRC, which has a tiny amount of crop on it, has brought up the question of “phenolic ripeness.” The accelerated ripening due to the small crop, has actually left the acids high and the seeds a little less ripe than desired. Thus, I will be picking the fruit at a little higher sugar level than I would normally desire– 25 brix equals out to about 14.5 alcohol. Though this is surely not high based on typical California standards– I just had some Loring at well over 15%– I am not a believer in Pinot that satisfies the quick-fix fruit bomb craving (there is Zinfandel for that!). That said, I also do not like green flavors (I had a Swan wine the other night the epitomized under-ripe, vegetative components), so I am striving to find the middle here.

No matter the ripeness though, the winery is ready to receive the fruit.

The Zambelli destemmer is just that– no crushing of the berries, just destemming. With the delicate nature of Pinot this is particularly important since crushing will normally break the more tannic pips. I am also going to try something a bit more innovative to get color as well. As the fruit is going into the fermenter I will be spraying it with frozen-CO2. Not only will this chill the fruit, but it will also cause vacuoles in the skin of the fruit to break open, releasing color in a manner akin to a cold soak. Since I am not equipped with chilling this will hopefully allow for better color extraction early in the fermentation. Also, I am leery of using cold soaks with indigenous yeasts, and since I am a firm believer in using indigenous yeasts whenever possible, I prefer to shy away from the method. Also, since it takes a few days for indigenous yeast populations to start fermentation there is a bit of a de facto cold soak that takes place anyways.

The DRC will ferment in a Tonnellerie Rousseau 450L puncheon, while the Pommard 4 will ferment in a Tonnellerie Baron fermentation barrel. Though I was originally loath to use new oak for fermentation purposes, there is a good amount of evidence showing the some oak exposure during fermentation helps in fixing color– something that is at a premium with the light-skinned Pinot Noir. The ingress of new oak flavor should be minimal since the must will be in the barrel for less than two weeks.

So that is that! We will hopefully have video footage up so y’all can see exactly what I am talking about, but it is exciting times at Bedrock Wine Company….

Till next time….keep the bed rocking?