Things That Happened During Harvest Besides Harvest

It rained in early October this year, which meant that we had to take a break from Harvesting.  We try to bring in as much fruit as possible before the rain, but it is impractical to harvest when it is raining, so the valley came to halt the second week of October.  Meanwhile, the cellar continued to paint barrels.

Many wineries paint the middle section of brand new barrels.  Not only does it look nice, but it helps keep the barrel room looking tidy because it hides any stray drops of wine that may stain the barrel when we take our samples.

Every winery has their own proprietary stain, and it is always more than just wine.  If we used wine to stain the barrels, the high pH and rich nutrient availability would cause microbial issues.  So we start with a wine base (usually lees or heavy press) and then add a lot of acid to drop the pH (below 2), and increase the alcohol content (above 20%) and add sulfur, all to make the environment really inhospitable to microbes and protect the wine.  Also, a bonus is that the decrease in pH intensifies the pink color.

And then a lot of labor goes into painting the new vintage's barrels.  Here is my girl Madeleine working hard in the cellar.

But the end result is beautiful.  Also, the barrels have to be placed one by one in this room and then aligned by hand, we do this when they are empty and then fill them using a very long hose.  You can tell they are currently empty because they have little paper cups instead on bungs.

Another thing that happened is professional photographers and videographers were poking about the winery learning about winemaking.  Here Todd is demonstrating how we measure Brix on incoming juice, which I think the director thought sounded more interesting or romantic than it actually was.

I'm thinking pretty soon I will have some professional lights like that.  

Here Patricia is demonstrating how to read a meniscus.  She is getting ready to measure the acid levels in the juice.  Another procedure that sounds more interesting than it actually turns out to be on camera.

Here is a professional video that has nothing to do with me or my lab, but that I happen to be in.  The director wanted something going on in the background and asked Chelsea and I to stand behind the speaker and look busy.  The thing is that the speaker is 6'3 and Chelsea is 5'9 and I am 5'0 and in the background I looked comically small.  So they asked him to sit and me to stand on a stool.

The stool makes me almost taller than Chelsea, but I think my tiny t-rex arms give away my true height.

We also had some out of state visitors who got the pleasure of tasting 17 wines from my winery.  And I had the pleasure of setting and cleaning it up.

12 people, 17 wines, 216 glasses. One small table.

It was a little tight, but we made it.  It took me and a buddy about an hour to pour all the wines.

Anyone who doesn't think tasting wine is hard work has never been to a 17 wine tasting.

Currently Harvest is over and I have to play catch up on a lot of things, like paperwork, blog posts, sleep, laundry and quite desperately: grocery shopping.

-L

So Begins Harvest Twenty Eleven

Finally the fruit is coming in!  The vineyard crew starts picking at 3am and finish around 8am to ensure the grapes are cool when they come into the winery.  We try to have all the fruit in the winery by 9am.  Otherwise it can get too hot, and hot fruit (from being in the sun) is usually in worse condition than cool fruit.

Clusters are picked in small bins to prevent premature crushing from their own weight.  One pallet usually has 42 blue boxes, about 0.7tons.

The small blue boxes are dumped onto a sorting table and a crew of at least 6 people separate out the poor quality fruit.  Along with leaves and insects and twigs and all kinds of stuff you dont want in your wine.

 After the fruit passes the manual sorting table it goes up a second conveyor where it passes a fan.  The fan blows the leaves and dry material away from the clusters and they get collected in a net.

The next step separates the grapes from the rachis.  We only want pure berries in the tanks because the rachis give unripe, woody character to the wine.

 This is more rejected MOG (material other than grape) that doesn't make it into the tanks.

We also sort out dried (raisins) and broken berries because they also do not contribute the flavors we desire.

In the lab, we collect berry samples of the incoming fruit for analysis.

We weigh a sample of 100 berries, then mash them up to analyze the sugar and acid contents.  Knowing the weight of the berries at harvest helps us estimate yields in the vineyards.  Knowing yields helps us plan picking crews (how many people do we need) and tank space (how many tons are we expecting).

Then tanks are filled and quickly inoculated with yeast.  Notice the lack of color in the juice.


Color comes from longer skin contact.  This juice has only had a few hours of skin contact.


Here the dry yeast is being rehydrated with hot water.  It starts at 110F and before we can pitch it into the tank, we use juice to gradually cool it to within 20 degrees of the temperature of the tank, which is typically at 55F.


Frothy bubbles are a good sign that the yeast are active and ready.


The next day the tank is pumped over to maximize skin contact and aerate wine for healthy yeast.

And we are off and running.

-L

Charlie The Science Puppy!

Taking a break from work to play.

 Reggie brought his new dog to work the other day.  And I just had to find things to put him in.

Charlie the puppy in a desiccator.  I think he likes it in there.

Harvest update coming soon!

-L