We wrapped up our 10 days in Oregon and the California Coast on Sunday. Just in time to get to San Francisco on Monday for bottling of our 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon, Uvas Creek Vineyard.
The wine tasted the best of any of our samples. I think we found a real sweet spot to bottle at. My original plan was to bottle in September, but after the last few tastings I thought sooner was better than later. I didn’t want to risk drying it out at all, or loosing any fruit for more wood.
The wine was a little low on free Sulfur, so we added a bit at bottling to bring it up to about 30ppm. Still pretty low, most wine gets bottled with 50ppm or more.
The bottling line went mostly with out issue. We were short a couple bottles, but found another case to finish up. There were enough labeled corks this time, and only 1-2 minor snags that slowed us down. We ended up with 48 cases of 750’s and 1 case of magnums. They’ll be picked up on Friday and taken to storage until we’re ready to release the wine, probably in late September.
The addition of sulfur at bottling usually means it’s a good idea to let the bottles ‘settle’ a little longer before releasing them, so we’ll do that. I took home a few cases so I can check on the wine as we get close to release and make sure it’s ready to go.