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While Paul was at the day job today, I was at the winery doing punch downs and taking readings of the cabernet. We’re getting close. I turned on the water for a couple of hours and will turn it on again this Saturday.

I yelled at the pups to stop eating the grapes off the vine, you can see how well that worked out…Ghillie gave me a sideways glance and went right back at it. Up the hill from where I was standing was a pile of grape barf. Tis the season…

For those of you just tuning in to the chardonnay storyline here and the carboy pics, let me explain. Last year was our first vintage making white wine. The process is quite different than red winemaking. One thing for certain is that you want to have enough lees to keep fermentation bubbling along. Well, in a big stainless tank, you can’t really see how many lees you have left behind, it’s a guess based on what you watched pump through the hoses. So last year, we set aside a carboy, like the one above, with extra lees in case we needed to add them. The last thing you want is a “stuck” wine.

This year I put the extra lees in the carboy just for photo-ops. So we could have the photos to go along with the dialog.

If I can talk him into it, I’ll have Paul do a follow up blog on the terminology I used. I’m more interested in taking the pictures and drinking the wine…which is chilling now, the 2008 that is. 😉

Cheers!

Paul always enjoys my multiple personalities this time of year…I vacillate between TomBoy Dirty Winemaker and Domestic (OCD) Goddess.

After long hours of dirty grubby work, I like to dress up for date night. I like to put on a touch of make up and earrings, even if we’re headed out for a quick bite to eat at the local sushi bar.

Today, I’m somewhere in between while I catch up on housekeeping. The Harvest Party and Grape Stomp last weekend was a huge success, but there is still plenty to clean up. I moved the white sheepskin rug back in front of the fireplace for the season and had Kathy help me move the dining room rug back into place. (My dining room rug made the gallery pages at http://customragrugs.com/gallery/index.html )

The rug was custom made by Ronda Rose in New Orleans. We’ll be seeing her and Walt next week while we are there. They hosted Paul and I last year in their downstairs apartment in the French Quarter and were absolutely wonderful to us.

Paul always poses the same question to me before an event, “how would you react if someone spilled red wine on your rug?” and that’s when I make the decision to remove it. When there are more than ten people for dinner I get a little antsy about the spills.

As luck would have it, the only red wine spilled at the last event was outdoors – no worries there. And the only broken stem was while we were washing and drying, amazing!

This year I partnered with SMUM, a local charity that serves the San Jose community. I collected $10 donations during the Harvest Party for their Warm Hearts project that provides sleeping bags for the homeless. We collected $370, a fantastic amount. THANK YOU!

We stomped some grapes, had some great eats, watched the Sharks game, and danced til midnight…don’t tell Mom, but there was cigar smoking out back too.

I’ll be headed back to the winery for punch downs again and will let Paul update the progress on winemaking.

Cheers!

I took this picture as we were leaving. It was about 7PM. The moon was up and the sun is still shinning on Monte Bello Ridge across Portola Valley from us. We still had sun in the lower section of the vineyard but the upper section was dark.

Fermentation started going full speed on the Chardonnay. This is the tank inside. The temperature had gotten up to 65 degrees.

This is the scary froth that worried Stefania so much last year. It also is a little stinky as it bubbles. We have been having so issues with the chiller for the tanks and had to sit and wait to make sure everything was working. The temperature dropped to 62 while we waited and was at 55 by 11PM. This morning we will turn it back off. We’re trying to keep it right around 55-60 degrees.

Looks like Hefewiezen, but it’s Chardonnay. It tastes really good right now very sweet with apple and peach flavors.

And this is what’s going on with the carboy!

It’s hard to not think ‘baby poop’. It bubbled over yesterday afternoon. I had to remove the lock and clean it out, then I poured off a little of the gunk so it won’t be so explosive. Then scrub the floor with soda ash.

Now that the Cabernet Sauvignon from Crimson Clover is in bin and the Chardonnay is in tank, it’s pretty routine work for us. Right now we have Jerry going up in the morning to do punch downs and we go in the afternoon.

The first thing we check on is the Chardonnay. It has started to ferment, although very slowly right now. We check the temperature as we want it to stay right around 60 degrees. We also test the Brix level to see how much sugar has been converted to alcohol. When the Brix reaches 15 or so we will transfer the wine into barrel to finish fermentation.

Here’s Stefania’s lees jar. It has started to ferment and you can see the bubbles and froth starting. By Friday the entire inside of the carboy will be stained from the force of the burbling.

The CO2 is released through this airlock, It bubbles non stop right now. This keeps oxygen and bugs out and lets the CO2 escape.

Then it was to the outside and punch downs on the Cabernet. You can see how clean Stef keeps the sides of the bins. We don’t want any debris for bugs or bacteria to get a hold. This bin smelled amazing, the best smelling bin I’ve ever had at this early stage. It was like ripe blueberry and boysenberry pie.

One question we get asked all the time is: “Who does the work.” People are usually expecting us to tell them we have a crew or a staff. Well here’s the crew and staff at work. Stefania doing a punch down. You can see the Hydrometer in the picture. We also take readings on this to see how far along it is.

We returned to the winery about 2:30 yesterday afternoon. Jerry had been there in the morning to do the morning punch down and put away the nets. The Chardonnay needs 24 hours to settle and should get to 55 -60 degrees. The temperature in the tank was right at 57 when we arrived.

Rare picture of me, usually I have the camera, but Stefania was working the pump and took this shot. I’ve got the hose and racking wand in the tank drawing off the juice and fine lees and trying to avoid getting the gross lees. The wine is pumped into an inside tank for fermentation. We don’t add yeast, I like to let the native yeast go on their own, I think it makes a more complex wine.

This is what’s left. The gross lees. Stef cleaned the inside of the tank while I cleaned the hoses, pump and other equipment we used.

This is a portion of the lees that Stef stuck in a 5 gallon glass carboy. Over the next couple of days about 4 inches of juice will rise to the top. Then it will start exploding all over the inside of the carboy as it ferments. She’s described this to people but we thought we’d take pictures this year. It’s really pretty gross to watch.

Then we punched down the Cabernet fermenting in one ton bins. The fermentation is going slow and cool, just how we want it to go. This will give us good color and fresh fruit flavors.

We also wipe down the sides of the bin to keep everything clean and prevent any spoilage from getting started.

We finished up about 5:30 and headed home. A nice easy day after three pretty tough ones.

There was no fog as we started at 7:45. Good for the grapes, no extra water on them to dilute the wine, but bad for us. It would be a long, hot hard day and my on going cold would be hard on me through the day. Jerry had the crew working well, focused on clean bins and getting all the fruit.

Chardonnay is tough to pick because when it’s ripe it’s the same colors as the fall leafs on the vines. We usually send one person behind the pickers so check for any missed clusters.

The scary crusher set up. We actually got it up in place ok, getting down though was a little more dramatic. The grapes go in to the top of the crusher in 30 pound bins and are destemmed. The must then drops into the press below. Most of the juice runs ‘free’ into the pan below and is then pumped into a pre-chilled tank for 24 hours. This will help the solids or ‘lees’ settle out to the bottom of the tank

I had a little trouble getting the press to run. It’s a bit temperamental. It would not get out of the decompress phase in automatic mode, so I had to restart it and run through the cycles manually. Then there was about 4 hours of clean up.

Stef cooked a great lunch for everyone though and had lots of snack on hand. My 2PM my cold was wearing me out and I though about trying to sleep a little on the winery floor, but pulled a chair up in front of the press instead. The final numbers were very exciting. 25.5 Brix, 3.5 pH and a TA of .8 The juice tasted fantastic, with ample sugar and peach and pear notes. We harvested 2.2 tons in all.

We got home and into bed by 8:30 and got in 9 good hours of sleep. One more vineyard done, and probably the hardest day of winemaking we’ll have.

Saturday morning we were up again before 6 AM and on the road by 6:30. We arrived right at 7:00 AM at Crimson Clover and started picking. Here are the very first Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to come in:

The sun just starting to peek through about 7:30. We have to harvest early to get the grapes into the winery why they are still cool and to be able to do all the clean up at the end of the day with out working too far into the night.
The crew was our regular group. Jerry and his family and friends plus Stef , Millie and me. We had some volunteers join us later in the morning, but the crew was about 75% done by that time. We picked just about 1 1/2 tons in 3 hours.

The grapes loaded into a 1/2 ton bin for transport to Chaine d ‘Or. Stef and I dump the 30 pound picking bins into the 1/2 ton bins one at a time and sort out anything we don’t want here in the field. You can see there are no leafs or other debris in the bins.

Arrival at Chaine d ‘Or. The crush pad was already set up the night before so we’d be ready as soon as we arrived. Here Ysidro and Mille get ready to start moving grapes into the crusher. Processing went very smoothly and took just about 20 minutes from start until the lab work was complete and the fermentation bins were covered. Brix was 27, TA .84 and pH 3.64.

Our friend Eric got the job of foot treading about 200 pounds of Zinfandel for out Haut Tubee blend that comes from a small vineyard that neighbors Crimson Clover. It was Eric’s first full picking day and he was a little surprised that it was just 20 minutes of actual winemaking squeezed around 2 hours of driving, 4 hours of picking and 5 hours of cleaning. He fell asleep on the cellar floor about 3:00 PM

And there is a lot of cleaning. Besides cleaning up from the pick and processing we also prepped and cleaned for the Chardonnay harvest the next day/ Here Jerry gets the press cleaned and ready. The crusher also needed to get loaded on the truck and positioned.

Driving home about 6:30 Stef and I both commented that all in all it was a very smooth day and we felt relieved that it was ONLY 12 hours and not longer. We have a good crew and everyone knows there jobs really well. We were asleep by 9 that night and ready for another long day Sunday.

Second task for today was to test the Chardonnay at Chaine d’ Or and see if we are ready to pick on Sunday. Jerry ran down and got about a gallon worth of samples and Stef ran lab tests on the. Brix 25.1, pH 3.4, TA was still a little high at .94, but we think we are good to go and the TA usually tests higher from the field than it turns out in the bin.

The real test though is to go down and taste the grapes. So, as soon as the samples were in the lab I went down the hill to walk rows and taste grapes. First thing to access is the color of the grapes and the stems. They should be golden, not green and the stems should be turning brown.

Then you pick and eat. The first thing to test for is taste. Are they sweet, they should be much, much sweeter than table grapes. You should also be able to taste some of the flavors of the final wine like peach, fig and pear. You want to make sure there is not too much lime taste or unripe Chardonnay will also taste like asparagus.

Next the skins should break up on your back teeth. They should break apart pretty easy. If the skin comes off the pulp in one mass and is hard to chew, the skins are not ripe yet. This picture is a little gross, but it’s exactly what you want to see; skins torn apart easily by your teeth.

Final test is the seeds or pips. They should be brown, dark brown, with no or very little green. The pulp should also separate easily from the seed and not cling to it.

The grapes passed all the taste tests today, they are ready. I’ll worry about the TA right up until we get the juice in the tank and Stefania runs another lab test, but it looks like we are good to go. Picking will start Sunday morning. We start a little later at Chaine d’ Or than other sites. We have to make sure the heavy fog has lifted from the vineyard. We don’t want to add the extra moisture to the bins and tank as we pick. We’ll be on site about 8 AM and start picking about 8:15.

This is kind of a bonus picture of the vineyard. Up until about 20 years ago vineyards and nurseries were a little haphazard about clones and vines. Old vineyards always have some mystery grapes in them. At Chaine d’ Or we have these pink mystery grapes. Our best guess is that it’s Pinot Gris. There are about 8 plants total. Anne and Jerry always put it in with the Chardonnay, but we put it into the Haut Tubee.

Out traditional first picture. 62 degrees, 6:29 AM, still dark as we head out to pick.

We arrived on site just before 7AM, with the sun just coming up. This is our ‘steep vineyard’, and only the ‘A’ team harvests here. Stef is handing out picking bins to the little crew as we start.

With the ‘A’ team and just about 400 pounds to pick this year, we were done and cleaned up by 8:30. We’re at the winery now, getting ready for Crimson Clover tomorrow and moving bins down there today. I have another check on Jury duty in and hour so Stef might have to finish on her own.

I also started the chiller for the Chardonnay harvest. Jerry and Ysidro are out now getting samples to see if we will be ready on Sunday.