Merlot Harvest - Last Day of Harvest

September 15th.

Yeah, this was a little while ago . . . .

 It was time to harvest the Merlot from the vineyard in Saint Helena.  Todd and I drove up early morning to pick it up.  I love the blanket of morning fog over the vines.

The crew there harvested the fruit into the macro bin and used their forklift to lift the half ton bin onto Todd's truck.  Then we drove back down to my house in Napa.  This pick was very last minute, and it was only half a ton, so we didn't ask for any help.  I think this was a mistake.

 Due to the fact that we had no extra hands this day, Todd and I wanted to be really efficient in our set-up.  When we filled this tank with the Barbera, we de-stemmed into a macro bin and then bucketed the fruit into the tank.  This time we thought it would be more efficient to de-stem directly into the tank.  Here Todd is setting up the destemmer on the top of the tank.

 We also backed up the truck as close to the tank as possible so we could grab clusters from the bin directly to the de-stemmer.

 Next we needed to collect all the stems, so we backed up my yard waste bin to the other side of the de-stemmer to catch them as the fell.

I was really impressed with our set-up, so I asked my neighbor to take a picture.  I'm standing on the bed of the truck, pulling individual clusters from the macro bin to the destemmer.  Todd is standing on a ladder between the truck and the tank, cranking the destemmer.

 Unfortunately, the same thing always happens when I hand over my camera.  Blurry pictures.  I might look happy in this picture because it was the beginning of the process and I was very impressed with our ingenuity, but that wore off quickly when I realized how long it was going to take to finish.  All of sudden a half ton of fruit seemed very overwhelming when you grab it cluster by cluster.

 I took this picture to celebrate the empty bin.  Not only was this the last fruit of the day, but of the year.  Additionally, this was particularly triumphant because it took us a really long time to finish and we were both losing steam.  I can only speak for myself but I was pretty miserable the last 2 hours of this process.

 I thought we were clever going directly to the waste bin.  When we had many people helping, we collected the stems in small bins and then rotated dumping them in the large waste bin.

Stepping back though, you can see that we didn't have 100% aim into the bin.

 And stepping back further you can see that there was still a lot to clean up.  Still though, I'm going to call this one a win.

This was the last time for another year that I would have to clean up the basket of the destemmer!!  This was my least favorite item to have to clean up.  All the nooks and crannies and sharp edges, good riddance!

I think we celebrated with Jamba Juice because were so exhausted we didn't even want to have to chew our food, but next year I would like to prepare something more epic.

For example,

 This was lunch to celebrate the last day of harvest at my real job.

And this was dessert.  More bubbles, creme brule with chocolate biscotti.

This is why we still have real jobs.

-L

Favorite Time of Year

A fall morning looking out the driveway of the winery.  I love Napa in the fall.  I think the landscape is most beautiful when all the vineyard leaves are changing.  It's a small window, maybe 3 weeks between the end of harvest and beginning of winter when everything is rich with color.

During this time, the ground is bright green from the rain, the vines still have plenty of yellow and orange (or red) leaves.  When the window closes, all the leaves will fall and the only color left will be brown.  And frosty white.

Paradoxically, the most beautiful bright red leaves are the most diseased.  What makes for a pretty picture usually also makes lower quality wine.

This vibrantly colored leaf has a virus called Leaf Roll.  Vines that have Leaf Roll make lower quality wine because the virus has several different effects on the grapes.  It can delay maturity of the grapes, meaning you risk having to pick later in the season (end of October/beginning of November) when there is a higher risk of rain.  High risk of rain means high risk of mold on the grapes.  

Besides delayed maturity, the vine could be so diseased that it never fully ripens, no matter how long you wait.  This includes reduced sugar content and poor color development.  I think it's funny that these beautiful brightly colored leaves can make lighter colored wines.  

Even if the symptoms are not so severe the virus can also reduce the vine's yield.

So, it's even more puzzling to me when a winery puts the diseased leaf on their label.

Granted, Turning Leaf is not specifically showing a Leaf Roll leaf.  Leaf roll has to be red with the bright green veins, but red of any kind implies disease or damage.  Also "turning" leaf is not a far leap to "rolling" leaf.

Here only 1 leaf out of the vine is red, which means it is probably not a diseased vine, if it were, all the leaves would have some sort of coloring.  

When it's localized like this it usually means that only that spot is damaged and it's less likely to be a disease.  Maybe insect damage or the shoot was broken by the wind or vineyard equipment.  Either way red is not a color indicative of healthy leaves.  

There are a handful of varietals that have red pulp and therefore have leaves that can look reddish, but I'd be very surprised if any of these were planted in Napa.  And sometimes Malbec leaves can have a reddish tinge to them too but not this bright.

Another puzzling wine label to me is Esca, which is a fungal disease.

The fungus infects the woody tissue and leads to decline in vine vigor, the vine cannot effectively move xylem and phloem.  The disease starts in a spot and spreads throughout the vine, eventually killing it.

This is how the disease is expressed in the leaves.  The leaves dry out and can fall off.  No leaves means no photosynthesis for ripening the fruit.

However, bright colors don't always indicate disease, they could also indicate a nutrient deficiency or toxicity.  Even though I know better, I still really enjoy the bright fall colors of unhealthy vines and you should too.

Happy Thanksgiving!

-L

Barbera Drain and Press

After a little over a week of twice daily punchdowns, the Barbera finished fermenting and it was time to drain and press off the skins and seeds. We were open to extended skin contact but we started to get busy at real work, and we wanted to use the tank again for the Merlot, so due to timing, we decided to drain and press.  Having to make that decision made my garage feel like a real winery where space and timing are serious considerations.

The set up: Tank, buckets to move the wine from the tank to the barrels, Brute for the heavy press.

Todd backed his truck into the back of my house and we tried to have as short a trip as possible from the tank to the press, then the press to the barrels.

After the miserable experience of pressing the white wine, we decided to upgrade and borrow a better press.  This looks like a basket press (because there is a basket) but instead of pushing down with a crank, there is a bladder inside.  So it's a basket-bladder press.

 Todd is inserting a metal pipe into the barrel.

The pipe is not quite the right size, but the funnel still fits on top.  If we had put the funnel directly on top of the barrel, every time we poured wine in, it would splash all over the place and pick up a lot of oxygen.  Having the metal pipe means the barrel fills from the bottom up and splashes less.  To be honest it probably didn't do much to counteract how aerative we have been with the wine already, but we had a metal pipe, so we used it.

The first step is to drain the tank.  This means opening the valve and seeing what wine just flows out, the "free run".  We put a screen to separate the free run from whatever skins and seeds made it out of the valve.

We used many different containers, buckets, tubs, etc.  Here you can see the free run collecting on the bottom of the plastic tub and skins and seeds on the circular screen.  We filled 2 barrels with our free run.  That took about 2 hours.

But the skins still had a lot of wine soaked up, so we needed to press them and wring out the remaining wine.

 Once the tank is drained you can open the door and shovel out what is left.

We let the tank drain a little longer. At this point it became dark so the quality of the pictures diminished significantly, my apologies.

 Check out all the seeds at the bottom.

Now is was time to 'Shovel Out' or 'Dig Out' the tank, this usually involves actual shovels.

Real digging out looks more like this.  This is me shoveling out a tank at my real job.  Actually, I used a rake, but shoveling has a better ring to it.

Anyway, this tank is tiny, there was no need for shovels or rakes, just hands - nature's rakes.
PS, it was really hard to take a picture with the left hand and rake with the right, so please excuse the lack of focus.

 And done!

 So now the tank was empty and the press was full.

 This press is holding the skins and seeds from 1 ton of grapes.  You can see the black bladder all deflated.  We are ready to start.

 The press hooks up to a regular garden hose and fills up the bladder with water.

As the bladder gets bigger, it pushes against the sides of the basket and the wine gets out through the slats and skins stay inside the basket.

 Here you can see the inflated bladder.

Once we squeezed out all the wine we could, we let the water out, deflated the bladder and started to clean up.  When we took the basket out, the skins had formed a nice solid wall.  Here Todd is breaking off large chunks to put in the trash.  It was pretty cool.  Made for fast clean up.

 Then we sprayed everything down.  The clean up was pretty fast, but not fast enough.  It was about 10:30pm when we finished.  About 4 hours over our expected end time.  I don't know why we keep grossly underestimating how long it will take, its not like we do this for a living.

Ahh, clean press.  Such a satisfying feeling.

Until we remembered we had to press the Teroldego.

Oh and the Merlot.

Why did we make so much wine this year!?

-L

Barbera Punch Down

You know it's October and I've been busy with Real Harvest because I haven't posted here in several weeks.  Real Harvest is the one I get paid for, this is an expensive hobby.  These pictures were taken in September when we were doing twice daily punch downs.  Every morning at 6am Todd would come over and punch down the Barbera tank.  Then he would come back after work and do the same around 4pm. 

Here you can see all the grape skins when you open the tanks.  At this point it looks more like dried cranberries than grapes.  The carbon dioxide released by the yeast during fermentation helps to carry the skins and seeds up to the top.  The phenolic components we want to extract are in the skins, so we need to mix the skins back into the juice/wine mixture.  The alcohol in the juice/wine mixture is what extracts the good stuff from the skins.

Todd is better built for punchdowns because his height lends lots of leverage to the task.  The goal is to use the metal tool (punchdown device) to break up the cap of skins and seeds that float to the top of the tank and submerge it with the fermenting juice at the bottom of the tank. 

Home winemaking - sometimes a dining room chair works better than a step ladder.

Before the fermentation begins or when it's jut started, this is a miserable task.  In the beginning the grapes are really firm and there is not much movement.  You're punching the fruit mass but only giving yourself a good work out.  After fermentation really begins, the alcohol helps to break down the cell walls in the grape skins and the whole thing gets soft and soupy and you can really mix it up. Mmmm wine soup.

Todd's punchdown skills are superior to mine.  And my chronicling skills are superior to his.  If anyone wants to make their own wine, first, I would recommend a partner (or a really good custom crush facility), second I suggest you chose a partner that is very different from you.  This may seem obvious but it's made our project really successful.  Todd and I are very antithetical.  We infrequently need to divide up tasks because we naturally gravitate toward what we know and do well and usually those are opposite things, so everything gets done.  Eventually.

I'm done with the extended break.  The pictures are piling up on my computer.  I'll be back shortly.

-Lucia

Merlot Vineyard

When I first had the idea to make wine 5 months ago, the original plan was to make Grenche.  I wanted to make wine that I like to drink, and very different wine from what I make for work.  However, it was difficult to find a Grenache source that was both tasty, affordable and nearby.  

While looking for Grenache I found the Barbera vineyard and decided to give that a chance.  Teroldego was planted in the same vineyard as the Barbera, so we bought the Teroldego to have as an optional blender.  It was a risky move because I'm not familiar with many Barberas and have never had Teroldego before.  But I realized that not having the wine took some of the pressure off to achieve a particular style.  I don't have a Barbera in my mind that I want to emulate, I can just try to make tasty wine.

Then just when I thought we were done harvesting, a family friend of Todd's had some extra fruit from his Merlot vineyard.  It was extremely last minute, neither of us was interested in making Merlot, it really doesn't fit into the Italian program but we decided to check it out anyway.  

Since it was nearby, I drove to the vineyard in Saint Helena.  Vineyard matters are usually Todd's domain but only I was available to visit, so he told me to take a lot of pictures (as if I needed a reminder!).

So I took several pictures to give Todd and idea of the vineyard, and to share here.

Look at the large berries!  To be fair I have tiny hands.  But in general, berries this year are larger than last, at least in most of the vineyards that pass through my lab.

So after snapping several pictures, I started berry sampling.

I didn't have a sample bag, and the only thing I could find in the trash was a plastic Chinet bag, which was way better than my original plan to use my pockets.
So I collected around 200 berries in that to bring back to the lab for analysis.

Berries tasted good, sugar and acid were well balanced, the price was right, so later that afternoon we decided to get a half ton of Merlot.

Still not sure what we are going to do with it, but dammit we are making some Merlot.

-L