It is raining grapes!!!!

Well, that Pinot sat cool and still for two days– no sign of ferment, nothin…. It was freaking me out.

Then, on day three it exploded. The indigenous yeasts went, “YEE-HA! A sugar bath!” and started feeding like Marlon Brando in the seventies. The ferments dropped 25 brix in two days, and fermented at a hot 91 degrees…..It was freaking me out.

Since the little fermenter does not have cooling, nor the puncheon, I resorted to throwing in about 50 pounds of dry ice, which cooled the ferments enough to prevent them from killing themselves. This morning it will be pressed off….

The color is awesome, and the flavor is great. Lots of bright cherry and raspberry fruit with distinct spice already showing through. I am overjoyed by its deliciousness, even if it tried to kill me by panic-attack.

MEANWHILE. Bedrock Barbera came in the day before yesterday. It soaked up to 28.2 brix with a pH of 2.95. This is ridiculously low for pH, but after a water adjustment to drop the brix we should be fine. No potassium carbonate (Alka-Seltzer for wine) will be needed.

Also, mystery vineyard field blend came in yesterday morning, and it looks about as great as Zin, Pets, and Carignane can be. As my dad said “Zin just does not get much better than this.” It ws 25.2 in the fermenter last night, which means it will soak up to 27 or so. I am planning on adding water to bring it back to 25.5 or so, but then bleeding off some juice to retain the intensity (even though most tests have shown that no difference can be told with a water add of less than 10%).

And that is that. Bedrock Zin and Mixed Blacks will probably come in on Saturday, and Bedrock Merlot is sitting at 26.8 brix right now, but is still a little green due to the huge heat-wave we have had in the last couple of weeks. Cabernet is at 25, so everything is right around the corner!!

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Published:: 09.06.07 / 7am

Category:: Uncategorized

Ely Black 09.07.07 / 7pm

Good to hear your adventures Morgan and keep faith; after all, “It is thirsting [that] vitalizes wine.”

Eric 09.08.07 / 1pm

Congrats on the first harvest, Morgan, and I’m happy to hear the indigenous yeast is cooperating.

I’m not a winemaker and it was interesting to hear both that the brix level continues to increase a couple of degrees after crush and that you can add a little H2O to bring it back down a bit. Is that a common event and remedy?

Eric

Morgan 09.08.07 / 5pm

Hey Eric,

Thanks for the questions, they are quite good and address a common winemaking practice that many winemakers pretend do not exist!

One, in the warmer wine growing regions of the world, such as California, Australia, Argentina, Chile, etc.. it is common for grapes to ripen quite quickly. As a result, sometimes the flavors you are looking for in the grapes do not come until the grapes are quite ripe. In some cases there is a small amount of raisining of the grapes which end up releasing their sugar a bit more slowly in the fermenter and thus “soaking up” more sugar into the solution. Certain grapes soak up more– grapes such as Carignane, Cabernet, Merlot tend not to soak up much, while as Syrah and Zinfandel in particular tend to soak up more. This is because there is more shrivel on ripe clusters of Syrah and Zinfandel and it takes a little longer to extract all the extra sugar.

The resulting ripeness means that the ending wine would be either really high in alcohol, resulting in inbalance of flavor, or you woul have major difficulties getting it to ferment all the way (yeasts are not wonderfully tolerant of alcohol). A way of combatting this is to add some water to dilute the sugar content of the juice and bring it back to a level that ensures a clean ferment and a resulting wine that does not punch you in the face with alcohol. In order to not lose concentration I tend to “bleed off” or saignee some of the juice after I water back– that way the skin to juice ratio (the skins is where all the color and flavor come from) remains the same. So far though I have only had to water back the Barbera and Pinot a little– the field blends and Merlot have come in just about perfectly.

Please write back if this was confusing or if you have more questions!

Bedrock Wine Co.

It is raining grapes!!!!

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