Thanks to the great bottling pump I have, I bottled 53 bottles of 2009 “Cabrillo Bridge” Petite Sirah and 60 bottles of Chardonnay oak trials in just 3 hours.  Too bad the bottling pump doesn’t also clean up everything …

I tasted a little of the unoaked Chardonnay to see what it’s like, I haven’t had this particular Winexpert Chardonnay kit yet.  I really, really liked it, it has lots of apple and a nice fresh, round mouthfeel.  I’m looking forward to tasting my own oak trials side-by-side!  Thanks for the inspiration, Tim Vandergrift!!!

Things went pretty smoothly and quickly, though at one point Dave got a little ahead of himself while corking and double corked a bottle:

We got a little over 9 cases of each before we started hitting the sludgy part of the bottom.  I kept about 10 gallons of Petite Sirah in carboys and fined them with egg whites to smooth out the tannins.  Dave didn’t want to fine any, but he was very happy to take his portion of wine home complete with labels and shrink wraps.  Try not to drink it all before the end of the year!

I bottled both the Cellar Craft 2010 limited edition Marsanne-Viognier-Roussanne and the Winexpert Spanish Rose today, getting ready for summer sipping.  The MVR wasn’t quite clear, which I think might be due to my use of marbles for topping up my wines.  When wines with marbles are moved at all from their place of rest to the racking table, it seems to disturb the fine lees to a point that they never settle back in and clear out.  It hasn’t happened with every wine, but seems to happen a lot; or, I just happen to need marbles in wines that won’t clear very well anyway.  Either way, I ended up filtering the MVR with my Buon Vino minijet filter and a #2 polishing pad, and since I had it all set up I filtered the rose after the MVR also.  As usual, there were partial bottles of both at the end of the day, so I tasted these.

Tasting notes for the Marsanne-Viognier-Roussane:  Huge aromas of fresh apple, peach, and apricot. This wine was filtered, so very clear, pale gold in color. Actually very drinkable today, very balanced, with flavors of crisp red apple, melon, peach and citrus. Long, luscious, mouth-filling finish. Definitely more integrated already than the 2009 version of this limited release.

Tasting notes for the Spanish Rose:  Bottling day tasting note from partial bottle. Very faint nose, barely any aromas. This wine was filtered, so very clear, lovely rose color. Flavors of strawberry and guava with light spice, though very closed up.  It did open up later in the evening, so I’m very much looking forward to having this wine around for summer cookouts and sunsets.

We drove up to Fallbrook yesterday to meet up with Paul and a bunch of his neighbors to bottle his 2009 Merlot and Petite Sirah from Lambert Bridge Vineyard in Sonoma (the same grapes we made wine from that need to be bottled soon).  It was a very nice day, sunny and warm but not too warm.

50 cases of empty bottles were ready and waiting.  We set up the bottling line in the winery, after having some barrel samples and snacks.  Both wines were tasting great!  It actually took a while to get going.

Once we did get set up it went pretty fast.  Everyone picked their roles — bringing in cases of bottles, filling bottles, corking, and putting filled bottles in finished cases.  We stopped for a lunch break about half way through, Paul grilled up some chicken and steelhead trout and it went great with the red wines.

Paul flippin' the chicken... not what he's usually flippin'

Everyone had a great time, and we pretty much emptied the barrels.  Now Paul has quite a nice stash — inspiring me to bottle our barrels, too!

Debbie and Cory enjoying their "Tom Sawyer" experience

Brian and Paul are big Journey fans!

I had the opportunity to show off my new shop on Fox morning news today. It was really fun, except for the 5 am starting time. In the first segment I demonstrated how to start a wine kit, then in this second segment I bottled my Winexpert Chilean Carmenere. The camera guy got a little too close when I was corking the wine and I kinda knocked him on the head, sorry about that!

If you’d like to see the whole taping, you can watch it here. Have fun!

Tasting notes:  Rich, voluptuous aromas of juicy blackberry, currant, and plums. Lovely ruby-garnet in color. Mouth-filling flavors of blackberry, boysenberry, and cassis with hint of vanilla and cedar in the long finish. This is such an amazing wine, if I say so myself!

Seems to be time to restock the cellar!  Having just bottled my 2009 Primitivo, today I bottled another batch of Winexpert Chamblaise. This will be the fourth time to make this kit, it’s such a great easy-drinker. This batch cleared very nicely and I did not have to filter as I did with previous batches.

I bottled this batch at Curds and Wine instead of at home.  I bottled, corked, and labeled the whole batch in about 20 minutes.  It was very nice to have a nice big space to work at, and a big sink for cleaning up.

Next on the agenda is the 2009 Fallbrook syrah.  Can’t wait to get that one bottled, although it will be a very small batch — about 11 gallons total to split between 3 people.  Oh well, at least there will be plenty of 2010 vintage!

One thing I forgot was how much preparation it takes before the actual bottling process.  I do my winemaking in the kitchen, which means cleaning up the surfaces before starting anything.  That’s one benefit to having a dedicated space for bottling, or making your wine at a home winemakers’ center like Curds and Wine, where the proprietor prepares everything and cleans up for you (a little shameless self-promotion).

I racked the 4 carboys together into a 30-gallon “primary fermentor,” AKA food-grade plastic trash can.  It then took about 20 minutes to fill all of the bottles, another 10 minutes to put on shrink capsules with a thermocapsuler, and 10 minutes to slap on labels and put the bottles into boxes.  The final count was 76 filled bottles and one partial bottle.  We had the partial bottle with dinner.  Although it is young and freshly bottled, it is showing great promise.  The wine was very clear, probably due to a year bulk aging.  Light aromas of black currant and blackberries with hint of black cherry.  Good oak, though definitely needs some time to settle in with the chewy, dusty flavors of dark ripe fruit and tea with smoky finish.  The wine is definitely quite closed right now, but hopefully in just a few months it will open up and be ready for late summer cookouts.

In my excitement to get the wine bottled, I completely forgot to test the free SO2 or add an extra dose of Kmeta before bottling.  I guess this will be a test wine to show how important proper SO2 levels are for aging — worse case, we’ll have to drink it all sooner than later!

Our 2010 Fallbrook syrah is hanging out in the flextank, which did pop out into a perfect sealed cylinder once the wine was pumped in.  Paul came by to get a pound of “house toast” French oak to toss in, we’ll taste it in a few months to see what we think.

He also brought a sample of wine for me to test free SO, so I checked that as well as the merlot and petite sirah in the barrels.  I used my new favorite toy, the SC-100 analyzer from Vinmetrica (which I happen to carry at Curds and Wine).  This instrument is so easy and fast, I love it!  It turned out everything needed a dose of metabisulfite, which didn’t really surprise me. The merlot and petite sirah also need more oak, Dave and Josh will visit soon to taste and discuss oak options.  I’m considering a mix of American and Hungarian oak, any suggestions are welcomed!

I got an email today from Mike Hoffman that the syrah started veraison and harvest should be around the first week of September.  Hopefully there won’t be a last-minute heat wave like last year, which raisined a lot of the grapes before we could pick them for wine.

I’ll need to start thinking about what supplies I’ll need for harvest and crush, I should order them soon so that they are here when I need them.  In the meantime, to prepare for harvest day, I bottled one bottle of the 2009 vintage to have when we’re done picking.  I’ll bottle the rest soon, I just need corks.

I took the bottom of a topper bottle to taste, so probably not the best representation of the wine, but it’s still pretty good.  Good oak on the nose, with aromas and flavors candied fruits and light spice.  This sample was not clear, but the wine I pulled off for the bottle was very clear.  Looking forward to the 2010 harvest!

So, I’m starting by racking off the merlot I already have at home.  It’s time to check the MLF, and happily it’s done!  I’ll add some sulfite and 3 ounces of heavy toast french oak cubes to the 6-gallon bottle., and a half ounce of oak and a pinch of sulfite to 2 one-gallon bottles.

When I went over to the office winery to pull of any recovered petite sirah from the pooled sludge, I was greeted by a swarm of fruit flies!  Needless to say, they had made a very happy home in our bucket o’ sludge, so I left it alone and will let Dave dump it out (he loves cleaning out the buckets!).  I grabbed the extra merlot and headed back home to add it to the rest, and also took a little of the petite sirah from the barrel that had been freshly inoculated with VP41 malolactic bacteria.  I’ll pour that into the syrah and hope *maybe* that will get the MLF going.  I’ll also put the bottles out in the garage to try to warm it up during the day.

After all of that wine shuffling, I still need to put the foils on the barolo and merlot that was bottled last weekend.  Happily, none of the corks seem to be leaking.  The Mosti Mondiale barolo kit came with corks and foils (as well as labels, but I made those myself), so I used those for finishing off the bottles.  It really sets those apart, plus then I will remember that this is the mega-expensive kit wine when I open them in a few years.  Hopefully it will be worth it!